Antique Light
by writerfan2013
Summary: "Holmes diary, 1894: Although Miss Watson was a lady, I rose and reached for my Persian slipper. "Excuse me if I smoke," I said. "I have had rather a trying day." She frowned at this. "I don't like cigarettes," she said. "Then that is all right," I said, "for I only smoke a pipe at home." Crossover Granada and Elementary Holmes...Drama, time travel and romance! .. -Sef
1. Chapter 1

**The last entry of Dr Watson's journal. London, 1894**

Another triumph for Holmes! We have recovered the stolen jewel and will be returning it to the Museum in the morning. For now, Holmes plans to lock it up safe in his strong box where I surmise that even the trickiest of docklands housebreakers would struggle to get in. The papers are full of this so called Demon Gang and their acrobatic escapes into the dark places of this city, but I think tonight we would defeat even them.

Holmes will remain at Baker Street should anybody try for the gem, and I will go myself to the Museum to tell them the glad news.

This case has been one of our strangest and I trust that Holmes will permit me to write of it once a suitable length of time has passed. The Museum losing its most precious gem – a gem so secret and valuable that it is not on view to the public, nor indeed listed in any catalogue, but kept in their vaults, locked away in the dark. A scandal indeed. They knew at once that there was only one man in London who could help them find the person who has broken in, broken through their traps and locks, stolen the gem and made away before the first guard could raise the alarm – only one man whose knowledge of London's criminal underworld would be broad and deep enough to identify the criminals – only one man whose razor mind could make the links between the vault, the mud, and the bloodthirsty gang whose work this was. The man with whom I have been privileged these many years to work, my colleague and intimate friend, Sherlock Holmes.

I will go now and give the Museum the news. When I return Holmes has promised us a fine dinner of roast pheasant. He sits now, fascinated by the jewel, and I have barely had a word out of him all evening. But he will be talkative later, especially if I collect his favoured brand of cigarettes on the way home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Holmes' diary, London 1984**

I am wretched today. It has been one month exactly since Watson disappeared on his way to the Museum. I have searched London for him, searched England for him, searched my mind for any clue as to what occurred between his leaving Baker Street at seven in the evening and the Museum sending to me at ten to inquire if I had had any luck in recovering their cursed jewel.

I gave them a pretty short answer. Not, I admit, as short as those I have given since. I mistrust the Museum now, for they showed an odd interest in Dr Watson until the moment I revealed that he did not have the jewel in his possession when he vanished. Then their concern evaporated and it was all concern for the jewel, as my brain should have told me all along was the case.

I have the jewel still, and have told no one. Better that everyone think it is lost than draw the attention which seems to have come near to Watson. That they believed him to have the jewel is certain. Whether they are the Museum curators or some other interested party, including the array of lascars and other ne'er-do-wells who banded together to get at the jewel – I do not know, but clearly they are well informed, efficient in their dealings and not above harm to a person in order to achieve their goal.

I have fallen again into this weakness I noticed in myself since Watson vanished. That is to say, I persist in writing of him as lost when in reality he is almost certainly dead.

Almost. There is my hope and my pain. It is my fault in either case, lost or dead, but if only lost then at least there would be the chance to tell him I am sorry.

No. Watson is resourceful, brave and strong. If he lived he would have found a way by now to escape and get word to me.

He is dead, and I am indeed wretched.

And as to the jewel - In the coarse but evocative words of Mrs Hudson's new housemaid, a pert young thing apparently from the very depths of Wapping – whoever wants it, whoever has started this sorry business of the so-called Hungry Jewel – well, they can whistle for it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Email Emily Burke to Joan Watson, New Yo** rk City, 2014

OMG I cannot believe he did that! What did you do? I would have pointed the shower right at him! what did he say?

Joan he definitely has a thing for you. I mean, nobody is so completely oblivious that they do not notice that someone is in the bathroom, that the shower is going and that you are in there obviously naked and getting clean.

I know you say he doesn't care about those things, that you are just colleagues – friends, yeah right – but honestly Joan you need to set some boundaries. Don't give me that I already set them crap. If you had he wouldn't walk in on you in the shower. Or wake you up by sitting in your bedroom while you're asleep.

Actually I hope he does have a thing for you because otherwise this stuff is seriously creepy. I mean, sleep stalking. And he doesn't have any friends except you. That's just weird. How does he live? You keep saying that private clients pay you, but if he won't take any private clients that don't meet his special criteria of being super strange then how does that work? Joan, I know you, you can't live on nothing forever, you would miss the manolos too much!

I'm kidding but seriously, as interesting as this detective stuff is, you have to think about the future. Hanging out with Sherlock might be fun but it's stopping you meeting other guys, nice guys who might want to take you out and treat you right and all that good stuff. You know. I know you're not into marriage, don't chew me out, but really, don't you want someone to settle down with eventually?

Listen, I'm not saying stop the detective stuff. Clearly you love it. But Sherlock is stopping you meeting other people. Do you really want to end up like him, friendless and alone at the end of your life?

I'm just saying, ok.

Sorry, this wasn't meant to be a rant. I'll stop.

Are you coming over tomorrow morning? I have to choose flowers for this wedding or Jamie will kill me. I swear he's more keen on having a big white wedding than I am! Get a cab, I'll pay.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sherlock's blog, NYC 2014**

Watson won't be back for at least an hour. I have ordered Thai from a place which will take her at least twenty minutes to walk to, and another twenty to get back. And when I told her I had ordered, that was a lie. I will order it when I have written a little of this, thus ensuring that she will have to wait a good portion of time in the take-out place.

She may be cross with me. But the Thai will be excellent and she will have walked up an appetite. Perhaps I will play the violin for her later. She enjoys the music but more than that, she believes playing music is a sign that I am healing, that my mind is knitting itself back together after addiction and despair.

For now, though, I must note down the particulars of his case. Or is it a case? I suspect not yet, for my mysterious visitor did not actually engage me. But it will turn out to be a case, of that I am sure.

So.

This morning I was woken by loud hammering on the brownstone front door. "Watson! Watson!" I called and called but she did not , apparently, see fit to get up and answer the door so I had to do it myself.

If you get me out of bed first thing in the morning when I have been reading until six o' clock, you must take me as you find me.

The gentleman on my doorstep found me in boxers, nothing else, and rather grouchy.

I found him – remarkable.

He was dressed as a butler. I don't mean fancy dress. I mean, an actual butler, English style, black suit wit a fine pin stripe, wide set. A classic Gieves and Hawkes design, matching waistcoat, starched white shirt – does anyone still do that? – I suppose the evidence was right there fore my eyes – with a small black bow tie. He even had a gold watch chain. On his head was a bowler hat. He looked like Mr Benn. I looked down to see if spats completed his outfit, but no - just highly polished black shoes, oxford brogues, handmade by Loakes of Northampton I believe.

"Only two types of people wear those shoes," I told the man. "Millionaires waiting to prove that new money is just as good as old, and butler. Which one are you?"

"Neither," he said, and he was British as I suspected. Southern accent, a little blurred by long residence in America. Surrey, I thought, but on the London end. "I am a partner in a law firm. Harding and Roache."

We shook hands. I gestured him inside.

"Is Miss Watson here?" he asked, motioning to remove an envelope from his inside jacket pocket.

"She is upstairs asleep," I told him.

His hand stopped mid-motion. "Oh!"

For a moment he did not know what to say or do. Watson's presence was completely unexpected, I am prepared to swear.

"Can I help?" I asked, feeling, I'll admit, rather put out that it was Watson the man sought and not me. As much as anything els,e it was highly unusual for anyone to come calling for her. She does not get a lot of visitors. I discourage them, to be honest. Her female friends look at me either as something which was attached to their shoe or as something which ought to be attached to their bedstead. The scenarios are equally uncomfortable. Even Watson's more attractive friends must remain off limits. I am not a total fool.

The man from Harding and Roache took out his watch – an actual fob watch! – and consulted it. "It must be tomorrow then," he muttered.

Why do people look at their watches when it is the date they wish to confirm?

"What is tomorrow?"I demanded.

The man became flustered. "I must not say, I must not say." He raised his hat to me , glanced incredulously at my near total state of undress, and practically ran from the house.

Then Watson appeared. Today's breakfast outfit: baggy t shirt, tiny shorts, acres of golden thigh, forbidding expression as she catches me looking. "What was that about?"

I was pleased she was up. We were out of milk and I fancied cornflakes. "I have absolutely no idea."

It seems that our visitor will call again at some date in the future - perhaps tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Journal of Jenny Flint, second housemaid, 221b, Baker Street, London**

Mr Holmes is sad again tonight. Mrs Hudson says it is the fog, oppressing us all, but even in the fortnight I have been in this house I k now my master well enough to tell apart sorrow and weather.

At first I despaired, for it seemed that he was troubled by the loss of the jewel. And if Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective England has ever known, cannot trace the Hungry Jewel, then who can? The Museum then must turn to the police, and that is the resort of the very desperate indeed.

But then I observed further, and saw that Mr Holmes does not mourn his lack of success as regards the jewel. No. Quite the reverse. He seems not to care about the jewel, not one whit. The jewel appears to have gone from his mind, set aside. He knows where it is, then.

No. His troubled mind is the result of his missing friend, this Dr Watson that Mrs Hudson weeps over in the kitchen with us. Such a lovely man. So handsome and kind. A well respected doctor, loved by all who knew him, and so on and so forth.

Well, I didn't know him. He walked out one night on an errand for Mr Holmes – to do with the jewel, it must have been that – and he never came home.

He is a clever man, Mr Holmes – of course. I knew that would be so. But he is also – so alone. Keeps into himself, he does. Sits by the fire with his pipe not even lit and looks at the flames. Mrs Hudson says Hush, he's thinking, and I say, I am not speaking it's you who are speaking and she gives me a shocked look because I cheeked her, but then I smile and she thinks she imagined it because after all I am so sweet and very good at my work too.

Then she goes away and I stand with a duster in my hand and watch Mr Holmes and his eyes go far away into the flames and the pipe is limp in his fingers and he sinks down inside his smoking jacket until he is just a dark head above the quilted silk, a head with silver streaks running all through the hair, and lines around the eyes, which are now closed, and a sad tilt to the lips which are pressed together as if he is refusing a pain.

He is cold and distant towards the staff, Mrs Hudson excepting. He has known her a long time. Mr Holmes is not the kind of man you could get to know in a day, although he could get to know you in a minute.

For this reason I am cautious around him. I am staff, so invisible, but even in the midst of his grief for his friend he must notice the new face.

I must not give him a reason to suspect me.


	6. Chapter 6

**Holmes' diary London 1894**

My case does not interest me. There. I have said it. It is simply a fact, another fact, noted down in my journal for later recollection. There is no more or less to it than that.

Yet seeing the words written in my own hand, obviously created by me, I am burdened with a peculiar sense of loss.

My case, to be sure, is not a particularly interesting one. A missing brother, a letter written in code of the most rudimentary kind – obviously he wishes to be fond – and a false inheritance to lead on the attractive fiancée of the brother who has come to me in the search for his lost relative – all rather pedestrian.

Yet it has some points about it which lift it above the merely mundane. I have not actually located the brother – I am in hopes that he will be unable to resist dropping another large hint and so lead me to him – and the fiancée will need to be disabused as to the pecuniary circumstances of the family into which she is to marry.

Nonetheless I am not engaged. I am not intrigued. Nothing intrigues me.

I look at the jewel sometimes, in the middle of the night when no one is here, and it seems malevolent and mocking. Its red heart does not beat yet seems to pump life and interest from my very soul.

A foolish notion. I am not prone to fancies yet the longer I go on, the more I am distracted and the less I am able to think.

It is not like boredom – that terrible hunger which I must feed before it consumes me utterly. It is not like the need for stimulation which I have found in the needle and the seven percent solution. It is not like anything I have known

It is – emptiness.

I am a cup without tea. A travesty. A detective without the power or the inclination to detect.

I will give the jewel back tomorrow.


	7. Chapter 7

**Joan Watson's phone. NYC 2014**

 _Image file:_ Emily in an ivory satin gown with a flowing train. Smiling and holding a champagne flute. The hand of the sales assistant, just in shot, smoothing out the skirts.

 _Image file:_ Emily in an ivory satin gown – shift style with fishtail skirt. Laughing and mid-twirl.

 _Image file:_ Emily in an ivory satin gown – lace trim, lace sleeves like the Duchess of Cambridge.

 _Image file:_ Emily in an ivory satin gown – off the shoulder. Pink cheeks, bright eyes, provocative smile for the camera. the champagne fluter standing empty beside the empty bottle and Joan's half full flute, on a small side table.

Text message sent from Joan: _Oh thank god. Will be there in fifteen._

 _Image file:_ unusual pock marks on the fingers tips of the murder victim. Copy of the same file attached to message to detective Bell.

 _Image file: (accidental)_ – the surface of the counter of an all night diner. It is reflective. Just seen – neon street sign reflected in the counter, the white curves of two coffee cups, and a man's hand in motion, pointing.

 _Image file:_ Sherlock flaked out on the couch with the completed case file still dangling from his hand. His socked feet (one red, one blue) rest on the far arm of the couch, his head on a cushion propped against the nearest. Joan's coat is spread over him and tucked in to keep him warm. Sherlock's face, asleep, is sweetly relaxed and unguarded. His hair is fluffed up and he is even less shaven than usual. His mouth hangs open a little and his head on its makeshift pillow is turned towards the camera as if he has heard the click of the shutter in his sleep.

 _Image file (received via text message):_ Joan in bed, glossy black hair spread over her white pillow, eyes closed, lashes resting on her freckled cheeks, generally looking peaceful except that the photographer has focused in on the trail of drool at the corner on her mouth and attached the words _Ha! Wake up Watson!_ to the message.

* * *

 **Joan Watson's notebook, NYC 2014**

 _I am truly honored to be giving this speech as Emily's maid of honor._

Too many honors.

 _I am privileged to be Emily's friend and it is with great pleasure that I –_

Sounds like I'm opening a mall. Maybe naming a ship. I name this ship, Married Emily. May all who sail in her – oh god, too creepy, stop, concentrate.

 _Emily has been my friend for nearly twenty years. Since she met Jamie she has been happier than I have ever seen her._

Yes. That's it. Happiness.

 _I know how much she is looking forward to starting their life together as man and wife, especially as it didn't work out for her first time around._

No! Obviously not. True though.

 _This time I am sure it will last forever._

I cannot say that. Because it starts with this time as if there have been six or seven. But also I am not sure. It's not about Jamie. Or Emily. They're fine. If anything could last, that would. But it won't. Nothing is forever. How can it be?

I don't even want something permanent. I would rather have change, interest, variety. The spice of life as they say. Much more natural. It is not natural to expect things to last forever.

So having to talk about it in front of a room full of proud relatives is going to be really really hard.

I will do it though. I must, for Emily's sake. She would do the same for me. Not that she will ever have to.

Ok. I have two lines so far. This speech is supposed to last ten minutes What the hell am I going to put? I am a terrible friend, a terrible friend who does nt believe in foevere and cannot write a wedding speech.

The only person I can ask is Sherlock, another person who cannot possibly believe in forever.

He will just tell me to google it.

Ah. Brilliant! Google.


	8. Chapter 8

**Holmes' diary London 1894**

I hardly know where to begin the list of outrages and deceptions which have today been revealed to me, or how to set down my fury at being so deceived.

I sit in my bedroom, writing by the light of the small lamp, no fire lit, and still I struggle to remain calm. But I must think of Watson, for in the midst of this betrayal there comes hope that he may yet live.

Watson had a temper – he would have – Well, no. He would never strike a woman. But I would fear for the china were he to receive news such as this.

I will start sensibly, after another mouthful of brandy, and attempt to lay this out in a logical way, that I may better see the next step forward.

When I returned from my walk today, the housemaid, Jenny, was waiting for me. That is to say, she was cleaning an already perfectly clean window sill, allowing her a good clear view of the street and my approach. This has become her habit, that she feigns work in order to see and speak to me. I tolerate it because it provides a curiosity, and because I have developed a paternal interest in this young woman. She is from the East End, as witness her mangled vowel sounds, but has received an education – thanks to the schools act of my youth! – and can read and write as well as any Eton boy.

She is quick with her work but does not care for it. She does it because she must. She has no vocation for service. She certainly has not the temperament to serve others. She is always reading over my shoulder and wishing to begin a conversation with me.

I confess, to my shame now, that on lonely evenings when Mrs Hudson has retired and no clients occupy my time, I have indulged her curiosity and talked about my work, my methods, and how I plan to solve any little case I might have on at that moment. She sat and listened, perched on the arm of a chair (not Watson's) as I paced about, and seemed quite in awe of me. How I have been taken in! It is a failing in me, that my assumptions about the female and the servant classes blinded me to the evidence noted by my own eyes.

But tonight as we were sitting talking my thoughts turned to the jewel. It has been preying on my mind as I have come to terms with Watson's death, yet still I have not returned it to the Museum. I suppose I had some thought of punishing them for my own loss.

No matter the reason, I turned to Jenny this evening and said, "Would you like to see something remarkable? You must give me your word not to tell anyone of this, for it is a deadly secret."

Her eyes lit up. "Oh yes, sir! That would please me more than you know."

She wore her maid's uniform – the black dress running to the ankles, and stout working boots – but had removed her white apron for our talk. I noticed this then, for it was strange that she should be so familiar with me. Her sleeves were long, of course, but I noticed that on her left wrist she wore an unusual bracelet. I had seen it before, partly hidden by gloves, but now I looked at it in earnest.

It was heavy and wide, metallic in nature, and had a dial like a watch. I have seen Swiss catalogues in which a watch to be worn on the wrist is advertised,but never of this design, and anyway, what would a housemaid want with a gentleman's wristwatch? The dial held numbers and had several knobs set around its bevel. One for winding, one for setting the time, but what purpose were those others?

I made a mental note and resolved to ask her about her strange ornament after our conversation.

"You may recall," I said, walking about the living room, "that last year a new branch of the British Museum opened. This building was to hold the greatest treasures of our Empire, and also to hold steadfast those items too precious or too rare for public sight." Jenny nodded. Her eyes on me were dark and intent. "One such item was a large gemstone, of indeterminate type but apparently a ruby, known as the Hungry Jewel."

"Go on, sir," breathed Jenny.

"The jewel was stolen a year ago," I said briefly. "The museum engaged me to find it and return it to them."

Her lips were parted. The clock ticked loudly into her anticipatory silence.

"And I did find the jewel," I said. I bit back the impulse to mention that in doing so I had lost my best friend. "It is here," I announced, and quickly opened the strong box which lives inside a receptacle built into my windowsill.

She sprang to her feet. "You have it! You've had it here all along!"

I lifted a hand to keep her back. "Do not approach. The thing brings bad luck to all who touch it."

Nonetheless she came close to me and leaned past me, straining to see it. "The Hungry Jewel," she repeated.

Her hand went to her bracelet then, and I knew that whatever the ornament was, it was precious to her, for the mind associates precious to precious, and I held, in my hand now, the rarest gem in the world.

As I held it I felt my skin burn. I glanced down. The jewel was hot. I exclaimed but was distracted by Jenny speaking.

"It is a marvel," Jenny said then. Something in her tone alerted me to danger. I turned to her and she was standing tall, her face lifted to me and her eyes full of remorse. "I am sorry, sir," she said. "Please remember his, that I never intended to harm you –"

And with the speed and skill of a practised pickpocket she had the gem from my hand, and was whirling away across the room.

I sprang after her and caught her left wrist, but she struggled, holding the gem ever out of my grasp. As I hesitated to fell a woman, she touched her strange braclelet, but my fingers closed over the thing and wrenched it from her wrist. My thoughts were wild – a thief in my house, a thief whose plot it had been all along to steal this gem! – but I had a vague plan to prevent her leaving, or ensure her return, by retaining the wristwatch she so obviously valued.

But here is the part which makes no sense. However I turn it in my mind it bears no resemblance to any event I can recall.

As I slipped the wristwatch from Jenny's hand, she disappeared. Wholly and bodily, with a look of horror on her face and a scream emerging from her mouth which was then sucked away to nothing as she caved in on herself and vanished.

I had in my scorched hand the watch, but Jenny, and the gem, were quite gone.


	9. Chapter 9

**Holmes' diary, London 1984**

More brandy. This must be the last or my faculties will be even more compromised than they have been by the shock of what I have witnessed tonight.

I searched the house, of course. The front door was locked, and all windows. Mrs Hudson's door was closed tight. I brought a lamp to the attic and disturbed the maids greatly by appearing at their bedsides, wild-eyed and calling for Jenny. They had not seen her since she retired for bed.

Knowing that she instead got up again and came down to wait for me so that she could talk to me, I abandoned this as a line of enquiry and searched again in the living room.

I already knew that she was not there, for I had seen her shrivel and vanish with my own eyes.

At that time I had not taken any drink. Nor was I under the influence of any opiate, for that habit has been closed to me since te disappearance of Watson. I need my wits about me.

And yet it is not possible for a person to wholly vanish.

I have the wristwatch – it is now in the strongbox. Partly this is because it is my link to Jenny. I hope that she or her employers come back for it, for then I will trap them and force them to explain what occurred. Partly though it is because I am afraid. This device, which on closer inspection was made more finely than anything I have ever examined – seems to have some sinister prupose.

It is not magic, but technology, that much is clear, and I rest easier in my mind knowing that I am not deaing with any supernatural event, but rather something devised by men.

I cannot rest though.

For this has given me fresh hope. If it is possible for Jenny to disappear, who knows where – then it is possible for Watson also to vanish. This would explain why no trace, no clue have I found in six months of meticulous searching.

And now I have, I think, a device which might control this vanishing. And logically, reappearance also.

I must consider carefully though before I take any action. The device is dangerous and powerful. It will remain in the strong box until I have more data.

In the meantime, I cannot rest. I must think. I must move. And so I will put on my coat and hat again, and go out into the streets of London, walk away my shock and horror, and try to come to conclusions about my next action.

Watson, Watson, if you are alive my old friend, I will find you.


	10. Chapter 10

**Joan Watson text to Emily Burke, NYC 2014**

 _Am at crime scene with Sherlock. Scalpel definitely murder weapon. Sherlock definitely brilliant. And impossible. Will get a cab to florists. See you soon. Joan x_

 **Notes in Joan Watson's phone:**

This cab has WiFi. who'd have thought that, ten years ago. Internet on the go.

Ok. I know who would have thought it. He thinks of everything.

Sherlock.

God, just writing his name. I shouldn't even write this. I know he steals my laptop and hacks into it. No, not hacks. He just guesses my passwords. Even when I make them heybuttoutsherlock he still guesses them and goes in and reads my stuff.

My phone is with me all the time though. I sleep with it under my pillow, like some parody of a cowgirl in the old West with a gun under her mattress.

If he wants my phone, he'll have to climb into my bed at night to get it.

Why did I put that, for crying out loud, now he'll see that too. Except he won't because I am never letting this phone out of my sight.

Sherlock in my bed.

Ridiculous.

I know he's thought about it. No lady friends lately and he is forever looking at my legs. The general looking has increased a lot over the last month or so. The attempted thefts of my phone too. I mean yesterday he walked in while I was in the shower. Naked.

I grabbed the shower curtain round myself and yelled at him and he turned his back and made some excuse about looking for something. Yeah right, something. I know exactly what. My phone.

If he had taken a proper look when he sauntered in then he'd have seen my phone, in its waterproof diver's pouch, next to the shower gel, under the running water.

I guess his next move will be some kind of ninja leap across the room to thrust his arm into the pouring water and snatch my phone before I can stop him. His arm, inked from bicep to shoulder, dropletted and warm, shooting straight past me to the thing he really wants.

No, Mr Cab Driver, I am not smiling at you. God, can't a woman smirk to herself in this city without some guy thinking it is on his account?

Ok then. So the score at the moment is Joan: one, secret diary: Sherlock: about a million, constant staring and not at my mind.

If he didn't want me to know then he could hide it. So he does want me to know . He is interested in me, as a woman.

A woman who very conveniently lives under the same roof as him.

A woman whose mind he doesn't hate. From Sherlock that is a great compliment.

I feel as if we are very close, sometimes.

Huh. Maybe very close to me making a total idiot of myself.

My vision - of us reading, like we do, him full length, his head in my lap, turning his eyes up to me from time to time and giving me that wide eyed look, the look of checking me, making sure I am real, making sure I have not left -

My vision is bull. He doesn't need me. I think he wants me. As what though, I can't be sure. I'm nobody's convenience, thanks all the same. If he wants sex then -

I don't know. It's been a long time. My thinking is all blurry because it's been a long time. Captain Gregson, Bell, Alfredo - they all look pretty good right now.

(imagine Sherlock choking when he reads that part).

He's the one I'd consider though. But I can't because it could ruin what we have. I can't take that chance.

And actually, it's worse now, knowing that he can fall in love. Because if we did get involved, it couldn't last - nothing lasts, nothing persists, nothing is perfect and forever. And so it would end, and he would be hurt, and I couldn't stand that. And I'd have to leave, and then I would be hurt too.

So Sherlock, if you're reading this and you know for sure that I have been thinking about saying _Fuck it_ and just jumping you even you look at me with those tie me down eyes, then this is why I don't and this is why I'm sorry, this is why not.

Oh great, what's happening now, there's always something in this city -

What the hell-?


	11. Chapter 11

**Holmes diary London 1894**

The September night was refreshing to my senses and without intending to I walked far into the heart of town, and beyond, all along Shaftesbury avenue and towards Aldwych. I turned back, not wishing to dawdle in this area where bootlegs and showgirls are equally keen to set upon a gentleman in a silk hat and opera cloak.

The night air was cool and damp, but not cold. I set myself a good pace, keeping time with my cane. My mind, sick of turning over and over the bizarre events of the night, swung naturally to other things n my endless observations of endlessly interesting London.

The theatres were emptying of revellers, and ladies and gentlemen crowded into the street, calling out for cabs. Hackneymen rustled up transport from all the mews round about, rigs appearing from every street all about, and I had to dodge those over eager to collect a fare.

I cut across Covent Garden, thinking it better to avoid the debris of the day's trading than the jumble of persons from the theatres.

I was perhaps a third of the way across the cobbles when, passing a heap of orange boxes I saw the vague outline of a woman, crouched on the ground and weeping.

The market square was dim - the gaslight is infrequent here for the market was long closed - and I approached cautiously.

It had been raining, and what light there was fell in slim bands across the cobbles, drawing dark lines between them.

My footsteps roused the huddled form on the ground, and she stood, scrabbling to her feet with a swift grace which spoke of frequent exercise. A horsewoman, or perhaps -

My breath caught in my throat, for as she turned towards me I saw that she was astonishingly beautiful. Her eyes were dark, and the fine slant of her cheekbones, and set of her jaw, marked her as one from the Orient. She had freckles across the bridge of her delicate nose, and her hair hung loose in a black glossy mass about her shoulders

She was dressed - in grey twill trousers like those worn by s workman and a loose grey jacket of some fabric I could not discern in the poor light. This was peculiar to me until I recalled that in the East, women frequently wear trousers like the men as they work the paddy fields or fish in the mountainous streams. Yet this woman, by her easy grace and strong stance as she turned towards me, seemed no peasant. Everything about her spoke of confidence and high birth.

It was a shock therefore when her first words to me were blasphemy.

"Oh my god," she cried. "Where am I?" She spoke English, and fluently enough to make me abandon any idea of recent arrival from China. Her manner was direct and her words coarse and brash for a lady. American, I estimated.

"Madam," I replied, "this is Covent Garden. Shaftesbury Avenue is yonder." I pointed with my cane.

"What?" She cast wildly about. "Where the hell am I?" she repeated, patting her jacket pocket in search of some item.

I made to move away then, knowing I ought not to linger in this dark place where doubtless her associates were waiting to rob me. Yet something in her manner arrested me. "May I assist?" I asked.

She darted forward and clutched my arm, then sprang back the instant her fingers made contact with my coat. "My god," she cried again. "You're real. This is real. It's all real."

"Madam," I began, "I can assure you I am perfectly -"

But she interrupted me, flailing around and calling out, "Sherlock! Sherlock!"

And then it was my turn to gape, my breath stopped in my chest, for the name she cried out was my own.


	12. Chapter 12

**Typewritten notes of Joan Watson. Taken far later, from memory. London 1894**

It was like falling. It was like dying. I fell through a pipe which got smaller and smaller, and I got smaller too but not fast enough. It was constricting me, my throat, my lungs, and I knew in a second that if I didn't come out the bottom of the pipe soon then this would be the end.

I tried to scream even as my brain told me to save my energy. I screamed for Sherlock - for the one person intelligent enough to understand what was happening in a second and the next second, to figure out the way to fix it.

But he was not there.

I was in a cab, and then I was falling, in this well, this pipe, this shrinkwrap.

As the tunnel shrank around me and over my mouth and nose I thought, black out now because suffocation is an awful death.

I thought, if I lose consciousness I don't want to wake up because in another minute I will be brain damaged beyond repair.

I thought, oh god, I've gone and he won't understand what happened and I never told him.

I landed with a crash. I don't think I blacked out. I landed on my butt in a greasy puddle full of orange peel. I landed with a squeak and just sat there soaked and gasping and choking and crying because I wasn't dead.

A car wreck. Obviously. The cab crashed and my weird experience gave me that dream.

I tried to stand but my legs and arms were numb and cold, as if I really had been folded up too tight. As I sat there I got pins and needles, the worst I've ever had. Circulation dangerously restricted.

I realised then that it was dark.

Also, that I was not in the street, but some kind of pedestrianised square. The ground was made of blocks of stone, there was a glass roofed building off in front of me, and antique lights like old streetlights dotted all around, giving off a weird steady yellow glow. It was like candlelight, except it never flickered. It was steady like regular light, but different.

I must have sat there in the wet and the dark, waiting for sensation to come back to my legs, for some time

 _This is not New York,_ I thought after a while.

 _I am not dead,_ I also thought.

 _Where am I?_ I thought.

 _Who am I?_

For a second I panicked, and then I knew. Joan Watson MD, ex surgeon, current consulting detective, friend and partner of Sherlock Holmes.

Fine. Good.

Still. Where was I?

This thought gave me strength and I struggled up just as a man approached.

He was tall, very tall, and thin as a rake. Also, he was wearing evening dress, a top hat, a black cloak fastened with a gold chain at the neck, and carrying a white tipped cane.

If I hadn't been soaked to the skin and shivering with shock, I would have asked him when Ginger Rodgers was going to show up.

I asked where we were, and from his answer I realised that I was in London. Impossible.

I was dreaming. But I touched him, and his arm was so solid and warm under my fingers that I was jolted back into my horror: the pipe, the dream.

I yelled for Sherlock, but he didn't come. I think I had hysterics for the first and only time in my life

The man stood gawping at me, as well he might, at some crazy lady shouting in the street. I thought he was going to make a run for it then - I mean who goes looking for fruitcake - but he took me by the elbow, quite firmly, and said, "How do you know my name?"

As a cure for hysteria, this worked startlingly well.


	13. Chapter 13

**Typewritten notes of Joan Watson. Taken far later, from memory. London 1894**

The stranger handed me his cloak, saying I must cover myself, and hailed a taxi. "Sherlock Holmes," he said brusquely as he looked about for a cab.

I shook my head

"You have evidently heard of me," he said, seeming slightly put out.

"Sherlock Holmes is my friend and colleague," I told him. "And sorry, but you're not him."

"There can hardly be two of us," he said laconically.

"Whatever," I said. By now I was trembling so much that even his cloak, furled around me like a blanket, could not help. "This is London, right?"

"Indeed. Ah. At last." He stepped into the roadway and raised his arm. He had a whistle at his lips and gave one sharp blast.

I wonder if it was that which convinced me. I don't remember now, at what moment I began to believe. perhaps the whistle.

No one has hailed a cab using a whistle in a hundred years. No one except Sherlock.

Yes, maybe that's what did it.

Or maybe it was that the cab which swept around the corner and stopped smartly in front of us, was no London black cab with a deep diesel rumble and an amber sign on its roof, but a tall black carriage, with a hatted and cloaked driver at the back, holding reins which draped across the leather roof like the hood of a baby's pram, and a brown horse stamping and harrumphing as I stood breathless and amazed.

* * *

Holmes, if that was who he was, practically lifted me into this carriage. His hands were cold, and for a man so thin he was extremely strong.

Inside it was very small, a narrow seat just wide enough for two. Lined with cushioning, quilted and studded like a chesterfield sofa.

And it smelled. Of horse I guess. Or leather. Or wood. I don't know.

We wheeled through the dark streets at incredible speed. Don't think about those tourist carriages in Central Park. This was like a Ford GT.

I grabbed at the handles on the doors and Holmes just stared and stared at me.

Finally we stopped. Another dark, foggy street. The fog, I realised as Holmes helped me to the ground, my legs still shaking, was half smoke. Coal smoke. Acrid. Pungent. Antique.

The street had terraced houses not unlike the brownstone, but in the English style. Long windows with fine leading. A door with an arched transom light above it. Steps up to it - stone steps with a dip in the centre of each tread where feet had worn them down

I ought to have demanded ID. I ought not to have got into a cab - of any colour - with a stranger. I definitely ought not to have gone with him and then followed him into his own home.

But Holmes did not seem threatening. He seemed as shocked and bewildered as me, but underneath it I sensed a hard determination to find the answer to the mystery that clearly was myself - and I recognised that determination, and I trusted it, and do I went with him.

The house stank of smoke: not coal fire smoke, tobacco smoke. The very wallpaper in the hallway reeked of it.

Holmes led me up wooden stairs to a little landing. There was a lamp attached to the wall giving off a dim yellow glow. He opened the door at the top of the stairs and stepped back for me to enter first

I walked in, the cloak hanging awkwardly around my knees, and my mouth dropped open.

A museum. A perfect museum.

There was a fire set in the left hand wall, burned down low but smouldering behind a metal guard. There was a fender all around it, tongs, coal scuttle. Two armchairs were set in front of the fender.

There was carpet, although which did not meet the skirting, in deep reds and greens and browns, covered with beautiful floral designs. The windows had red drapes in the same style - heavy and luxurious.

There was a sofa on the right hand of the roon, and in the middle a small dining table. By the right-hand window stood a writing desk sloped, and by the left-, a music stand. Bookshelves filled every wall space not taken up with photographs and drawings of evil looking men, plus some framed newspaper clippings. On the mantelpiece was a knife, a single slipper like Santa Claus' shoe and a framed black and white photo of a woman in a fur stole.

"Warm yourself by the fire," instructed Holmes. "I will fetch Mrs -" He stopped. "On second thoughts, I will make the tea myself. Mrs Hudson will be in bed by now."

He disappeared and I heard footsteps going back down the stairs

I took off the irritating cloak, and stood with my back to the fire, warming my rear.

There was not one single modern thing in the room.

I took out my phone. No signal. Typical. But then I don't have international call roaming on my call plan. It made sense

How I got to London made no sense

 _Leave it,_ I thought. _Recover a little. Get warm. Then ask questions of this man who claims the same name as Sherlock._

Holmes returned carrying a tray with a silver teapot. two china cups and a jug of milk. He set this on a small table and dragged the whole thing to the fire. "Sit, please," he said.

His voice was low and refined, rather gentle. It contrasted with his face, which was lined and thin, the face of a man who does not eat much and who thinks a great deal. In the firelight I saw that his eyes were grey, and his hair dark brown, lit with a little silver. I guessed he was around fifty. His clothes made it hard to judge.

Oh yes. His clothes. Well. He was another museum.

Black jacket. Not evening dress as such, just formal wear. He had on a long black coat – a frock coat? – and a black waistcoat and black trousers. He had accessorised: small black cravat, gold watch chain, white shirt cuffs deliberately pulled down past his coat sleeves. He had a small signet ring on his little left finger. He was dressed like - like the nameless visitor Sherlock told me about this morning. Masquerading as an English butler. Except Holmes was not masquerading as anything. His Englishness ran right through him.

He poured me tea. "Thank god for tea," I said taking a sip.

"I imagine it is not like your own tea," he said, studying me over the rim of his teacup.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Chinese tea. I understand you drink it green I have tried it in the opium dens run by your countrymen. Quite refreshing."

His eyes roved over me. "Tell me, how came you to be in Covent Garden, dressed as you are, looking for someone with my name?"

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "I was in a cab- a New York cab, a yellow cab - and I fell and then I was there. I -shrank. That's all I know."

At the word _shrank_ his eyes narrowed and his breath drew in sharply. He gestured for me to continue.

"That's it," I said. "An hour ago it was morning in New York and I was going to meet my friend Emily at the florists, to pick out bouquets for her wedding. Now I'm here, in London. It's nighttime, and here I am." I shrugged and spread my hands. "If you're like Sherlock," I invited him, "you tell me."

He turned up the corners of his mouth in a satisfied, eager way. "Remarkable," he murmured. "Quite remarkable."

He held out his hand to me. "Forgive me. My manners. I have not even enquired as to your name."

When I spoke he fairly fainted. But all I said was, "Nice to meet you. I'm Dr Joan Watson."


	14. Chapter 14

**Sherlock's blog NYC 2014**

This is peculiar. Watson is not answering her phone. I have left nine messages, that is, nine voicemail messages plus seven texts. I have been increasingly explicit as to what I expect her to do, that is to say, to return to the brownstone at once because I need her. In the last several I even explained why.

I have to move the bees down into the house and it is much simpler with two people.

I don't want to ask Bell or Alfredo. They do not understand bees the way Watson does.

In sentimental moments I wonder if her calming presence helped create my marvellous new discovery. Her own species of bee. She seemed suitably gratified by that.

But she is not here to assist me and I confess I am irritated by her absence.

I know she was seeing her annoying friend, the one whose imending nuptials occupy the woman's every conversation. How Watson tolerates it I do not know. I have banned her from the house – the friend, not Watson – because she was filling my mind with details about almond favours and themed chair back ties until I could literally feel my brain welling over with unimportant knowledge, pushing out the vital work I have built up over the last twenty years.

Watson seems not to mind this obsessive behaviour on the part of her friend. Or if she does mind, then she hides it so as not to hurt her freind's feelings.

I gave my advice. I told Watson she should disabuse her friend of the misconception that a single topic of thought and conversation is in any way healthy. "Your friend neds to branch out and find other interests," I told her. "A human being cannot be interested in a single topic."

Watson just quirked her eyebrows at me and said, "You can."

Then she picked up her coffee mug and walked off.

Honestly. I wonder if it is a woman thing. A hormone thing. Weddings do seem to bring on a mania which society considers absolutely acceptable even though clearly it is not. If the mania were on any other topic, the friends and family of the afflicted would arrange an intervention, possibly section the victim. Imagine if a person spoke of nothing but ...chair legs for a year and a half – types of chair leg, who should sit nearest to what chair leg, what theme the chair leg shuld have and whether or not a chair leg needs to be tasted, tried on, sampled, or enjoyed at a pre chair leg chair leg – it would obviously be a case for the men in white coats. Yet weddings, oh no, this is completely understandable and everyone has an opinion and wants to join in.

What was I saying?

Watson. She is not here. She needs to be here.

It is getting dark. That means – I am training myself to estimate the time without recourse to a wach or my phone – that in September, it is approximately seven pm. Watson has been out of the house since seven am.

Headlights outside the front window. Good. No. Not good. That's not a cab. Wrong configuration. It's – a police car.


	15. Chapter 15

**Holmes diary, London 1894**

I drank tea with Miss Watson, and she with me, and we studied each other. She seems a very direct sort of person – the American in her I suppose, for she told me she was from New York – and made no attempt to disguise her curiosity at my appearance, my clothing and manner.

I imagine my own surprise at her dress and attitude was similarly apparent.

After a while, although she was a lady, I rose and reached for my Persian slipper. "Excuse me if I smoke," I said. "I have had a rather trying day."

She frowned at this. "I don't like cigarettes," she said.

"Then that is all right," I said, " for I only smoke a pipe at home."

I filled my pipe with my favourite strong tobacco and struck a match.

Miss Watson looked appalled.

"You must excuse me," I repeated.

" Of course," she said at once. " I am a guest."

But she rose too and stood by the window as if longing for fresh air.

I stepped across and lifted the sash for her. She cast me a grateful look.

"Let us consider what we know," I said. I reached for my smoking jacket and, shrugging off my coat, wrapped myself up snugly. This was far better and as I drew the first sweet breaths of tobacco I felt my head clear. " You awoke this morning in New York," I began. " You took a cab to meet a friend. It is her wedding soon. She, and you, were going to select flowers for her bouquet."

"Yes. That's right. But –"

I held up my hand. "You were in the cab. You fell from the cab –"

" -No! That's not it at all. Or even if I did –"

"You said you fell."

"It was like falling. But I fell for a long time. A really long time. It was like falling down a – a well." She waved her hands about in a dramatic fashion.

I frowned. "The mind can play tricks," I suggested. " Perhaps the duration was an illusion."

"It must have been," she aid. She sighed heavily. "If I had really fallen for that length of time, I could never have survived the impact."

"Just so. Let us continue. You fell, you landed, as you put it, in the square outside Covent Garden Market. You rose. I walked past and we spoke. Here you are now."

"Yes. But-"

I waited. She shook her head and lowered her eyes.

" You appear to be suffering from amnesia, or memory loss," I concluded.

"I know what amnesia is," she said, rather snippily.

"Ah yes – you say you are a woman of medicine, Miss Watson."

" I was a surgeon," she said.

I smiled. "Midwifery?"

"No. Medical. Generalist really, but the renal area was my specialty."

I paused. " Renal?"

" Kidneys-"

"I know what renal means," I said. "I am merely surprised to meet a lady who –"

She was staring at me. "Who what?" There was an edge to her voice now which was highly unbecoming in a beautiful woman.

" A lady surgeon," I said.

She sniffed. "I was not a lady surgeon. Just a surgeon. Women and men, we were all part of the surgical team at St Jude's."

"I see." But I did not truly see. Certainly women study to become medically trained. Some even go on to nurse and provide valuable assistance to our doctors and surgeons. Midwives, of course, are a respected profession in this modern age. But when a woman marries and has children, this is the time for medical concerns to cease. Unless-

"You are not married," I observed, looking at her ring finger.

"No."

"Ah."

"Now what?" she demanded with distinct hostility. "I can't keep a man, is that what you're saying? I had to take refuge in my career? Well, let me tell you –" She stopped.

I waited, puffing on my pipe and watching her carefully. After a moment I crossed to the wall and turned up the gas.

In the increased light I unashamedly studied her.

She was not so young as I had initially estimated. Rather, she was a woman in her middle years – perhaps forty. From her girlish figure, as much as the lack of wedding band – I concluded that she had never borne children. This was shown, too, in the lack of care lines around her eyes – although her brow bore a permanent furrow, as if of habitual worry for someone for whom she cared like a child. A relative, perhaps, or the child of a friend. She had a burden in life, that much was evident.

Seeing my attention, she stood straight. " He does that," she remarked.

I raised my eyebrows.

"Sherlock. He gives me the laser look," she explained. Her turn of phrase was rather quaint but I grasped her meaning.

"Close study," I said. "Well. It is part of my profession."

She looked around. " Detective," she said. " –Let me guess – consulting detective."

" Yet you claim not to know of me," I said. Her pert manner was rather jarring. It would very soon outweigh any personal beauty. Perhaps this explained her unmarried state, for what man could live with someone so smart?

" Sherlock – my Sherlock – is a consulting detective too. So am I, nowadays. We work together."

I laughed aloud. "This is coincidence too far," I told her. "I am prepared to believe that another man might have my name – although I would be surprised not to have heard of him, even were he in America, for I am in regular contact with Pinkertons there – but that he should share my profession- and that you should share it too – this is too much, Miss Watson."

She folded her arms and gazed at me stubbornly. "It's true all the same. But that is not my real problem, is it? Whether or not you believe me. That's not the point. The point is –"

She moved quickly to the table where the evening papers still lay. She picked up the nearest and peered at the top right hand corner of the front page. Her jaw clamped shut. Her hand went out to the table and she held herself steady, then walked composedly to the nearest chair, Watson's chair, and dropped into it, still holding the newspaper.

It was the Times. The leader was perfectly bland – an announcement about banking. From memory, the smaller articles held nothing of note. "What is it?" I asked.

"The date," she said dully. " September 9th."

"Yes," I said. How long had her amnesia been in force? Had she lost days, rather than hours, of her memory? I began to calculate which hospitals might be contactable at this hour of the night. She needed treatment, that much was obvious.

"The year," she said, and raised her eyes to me. They were once again, I saw, filled with tears.

"Yes," I said. At this rate of conversation I would need another pipe.

"1894," she said.

"Yes," I said.

She blinked several time and looked around. Patted the arm of the chair, then rose and came to me and as she had in Covent Garden, and touched my arm, more tentatively this time. I remained still, allowing her to test her senses, to come to trust them. It is vital with a lunatic not to make any sudden moves, for they can be dangerous as well as unpredictable.

"It's real," she whispered. "I have come back in time."

Now this was intriguing. Delusional, not amnesiac. In my mind I sought out he titles of my books on this subject. I have three, all in the flat somewhere.

"Time travel," I prompted. "How far have you come," I asked in my gentlest manner.

Her tears were now falling, but I saw her eyes flicker as she made calculations. "A hundred and twenty years," she answered.

I smiled.

"Mr Holmes," she insisted. "This is all completely true. I swear. What reason could I have to lie, to make up something so stupid, so crazy? Why would I try to convince you that I vanished from my own time and appeared in yours? You would just " – she squinted at me then " – you already have – dismissed me as suffering from some delusion."

"Forgive me," I said. "I deal in mysteries of the real and solid, not the supernatural."

My mind went then to Jenny's bracelet, which I had lifted from her wrist at the moment at which she- disappeared and my mind was much disturbed.

"Miss Watson," I said slowly. " Please forgive me my cynicism. I want to hear more detail of your experience. You are correct. I was beginning to set aside your tale as too improbable, too unlikely, to be worthy of more than my sympathy and the attentions of a good psychiatrist. But something occurred today which sheds another light on the matter."

I led her back to Watson's chair. "Would you like refreshment?" I asked. "I will have a brandy, I think."

Miss Watson drew deep breaths and gained control of her tears. "I could really use a beer," she said. "Please."

The coarse tone, from a lady's lips! I fear I will never get used to this. "Beer," I said. "Are you sure? Perhaps a glass of sherry."

"Ok."

I poured her a small measure – hesitated – then topped it up. My own drink, too, was a little more generous that I am wont to serve.

This has been an unusual day, however. I will let myself off, and Miss Watson too.

I sat down in my chair opposite hers, poked the fire and lay down my pipe. And then I told her about the jewel, and the bracelet, and Jenny.

We talked until gone midnight. With every sentence, Miss Watson's manner spoke truth. She certainly believed her story. And she believed mine too, on the basis of her own experiences. Can I give her any less credit? I think not. I know now that to vanish is not impossible. Therefore it is possible. Therefore it is possible that Miss Watson vanished from New York – perhaps from another era – and that my Watson vanished too. I did not mention Watson, however, as there is nothing yet to suggest his disappearance is linked to Jenny's, or to Miss Watson's materialisation.

"You must be my guest tonight," I said. "I will show you to the - spare - bedroom upstairs. In the morning I will ask my housekeeper Mrs Hudson to attend to anything you may need."

"Thank you," she said. "Mr Holmes."

I sighed inwardly at her sadness and her gratitude, for both invoked the delicate feelings which are due to a woman. "Perhaps after a night's sleep," I said, "the situation will become clearer."

She nodded politely, but it was obvious that neither one of us thought it very likely.


	16. Chapter 16

**Joan's notes, London 1894**

It took me half an hour to get dressed this morning. A grey haired lady in a black silk dress walked into my bedroom and laid out about fifteen items of clothing on my bed just as I was trying to brush my hair. I found the brush, plus some cologne, on the dressing table, but it was worse than useless. I mean, how do you brush hair, with more hair?

The lady introduced herself as Mrs Hudson and proceeded to dress me. Holmes must have told her I was some kind of crazy lady, because she explained everything as if to an imbecile. Or perhaps he simply told her I was foreign.

At last I too was inside a Victorian outfit, which consisted of a tight bone frame with three cotton shifts over it, finished with a dress which was essentially a pile of black silk ruffles. It is like wearing armour. Underwear here is enormous. Hose is like leggings with the stretch gone out of them. The laced boots - the boots are incredible, the softest leather I ever knew, and the only part of my costume I might consider wearing voluntarily.

Then Mrs Hudson twisted up my hair into a knot and pinned it with the most vicious pins I ever saw. Sherlock would love them for a murder weapon. They never let you forget they are there, and now I know the literal meaning of the word needling. Mrs Hudson said my hair needed curling but I told her it does not. She was pretty unimpressed, but let me off. Maybe Holmes told her I was dangerous as well as insane.

In this elaborate getup, I descended the stairs from the spare bedroom - clearly not spare but occupied until recently by a man - and interrupted Holmes' kipper breakfast. He looked horrified, at my appearance or my presence I don't know, but weakly invited me to join him. Mrs Hudson waited on me like a servant, which was very uncomfortable, and Holmes held his newspaper in front of his face the entire time.

At last Mrs Hudson left, wearing a disapproving expression, and Holmes lowered his copy of the Illustrated London News. And the first thing he said was that I had to leave.

* * *

"I am sorry," Holmes said. " I have work of my own to do. I have been the victim of a theft, yesterday, a grave crime involving a most valuable item. I mentioned it last night. I must pursue the thief however I can and I cannot take on any additional work at this time."

I stared at him. The coffee, which was flavoured with chicory, was cold in my cup."So – what?"

"I am sure you will find a place to go." He waved an elegant hand and gave a little smirk which I have come to know as characteristic of him.

My mouth dropped open. "Where? I have no money, no clothes of my own, no clue how to live – here."

"So you say. And yet with all these disadvantages you found your way into a warm bed and a solid roof and a hot breakfast this morning." He was regarding me slyly with those bright grey eyes.

" I need your help!" I said, and annoyingly it came out in a squeak. I cleared my throat. "I know this all very strange. But – I'm afraid." This was true, so true that a tremor found its way into my voice. " This is a terrible place," I said quietly. " Poverty and crime and disease and I have no one to turn to except you."

He remained distant and cold.

" Please," I said. "I am begging." Did he want me to drop to my knees in this ridiculous confection of a dress and clutch at his ankles?

I looked out of the window. It was raining. Men walked along with umbrellas. The cabs threw up mud and people to either side leapt out of the spray. Nobody had rubber boots. Nobody had Goretex or proper waterproof anything. They had leather shoes like the ones I was wearing, clearly inadequate if I didn't want to get trench foot within ten minutes of leaving the house. "Please," I repeated.

Holmes jumped up and strode about the room, wearing an expression of great irritation. "Very well," he said. "I will take on your case. You wish to return to your home, is that correct?"

"Yes," I said. " If it means money – I will find a job, pay you back." These words struck horror into me, for how could I possibly find work here? I didn't even know how to light a fire. Horses scared me. The very basics of life were unknown and terrifying.

"Don't be silly," said Holmes very harshly. "You will stay here, as my guest, in the room you occupied last night. Mrs Hudson will make the arrangements."

" Thank you –"

"Do not thank me. I take your case for its interesting difficulty. And I offer you refuge because –"

He paused, and lifted his cigarette case, and took out a cigarette and spent a moment or two in striking the match and lighting the cigarette and drawing on it as he leaned one elbow on the mantelpiece. "Because I am a gentleman," he said finally, "and a gentleman could never leave a lady in a state of distress."

But his eyes were cold, and I knew perfectly well how much he resented me.

* * *

He went out then, and I was left alone. I asked Mrs Hudson for paper, and a pencil – I don't trust myself not to wreck my clothes by trying an ink pen – and began this diary. It looks childish written in pencil, but it is something real and solid. I couldn't write sentences if I was in a coma, could I?

I don't know. No one knows much about coma victims, that's the thing.

Will I wake up and find it was all a dream? That's what happens at the ed of bad movies, they go on adventures and then wake up and none of it happened. All their friendships and daring and conquest – nothing. They come away claiming to be glad they're home, with their delighted family squealing over them, but they must feel so cheated.

This is too textured, to detailed, to be a dream. Isn't it? I don't know.

Maybe my brain just thinks it is detailed. Maybe if I stared hard at something it would become fuzzy. Maybe if I whip round and look at something from the corner of my eye, it will be out of focus. Placeholders. Like in the Truman show: just markers for what ought to be there, but which is not there until Truman walks onto the set.

Ok. Stop now. I cannot prove anything, and that way madness really does lie.

* * *

 **Author's note.** Yes, the obligatory Wearing Weird Historical Clothes scene. We will soon get back to some kind of plot, ie the Jewel, but I enjoyed writing the interactions between 21st century Joan and 19th century Holmes far, far too much. -Sef


	17. Chapter 17

**Holmes' diary London 1894**

I write this in bed, for it is the only part of my house where I can guarantee solitude. Miss Watson is not an intentionally disruptive gest, but I am so unsused to people that I find her presence very testing. I like to have breakfast alone. I like to dine alone. I like to read alone. Yet at every turn, there she is.

She does read, at least. I have taken to handing her each newspaper as I finish it, in order to stave off conversation.

She gives me a dark look from under her lashes at this. She understands my ploy. Yet she accepts it, and somewhat caustically too, as if she has encountered such a strategy before.

Today she asked me if she might read books form my selection in the parlour.

"Yes of course," I said in surprise. "What title do you seek?"

"Anything," she said. " Crime would be good."

I raised my eyebrows.

"I am a detective," she said.

I smiled. "Then by all means look through the journals of crime of the last thirty years - I am sure you will find it most illuminating."

She nodded. "And – I would really like –"

"Yes?"

"To look at your case files."

I was quite horrified. " My files?" Only I, and Watson, have seen these. And the people who have read Watson's fictionalised accounts, of course. This gave me the let-out I needed. "Try this instead," I said, taking down a yellow bound volume. "This is the earliest, I believe."

She took it. "You're in a novel?"

"Not a novel," I said, rather irritated. " My – late friend – was kind enough to write down our adventures so that the public might learn. And be entertained," I added reluctantly, for Watson enjoyed his drama and always refused to allow the science to hold its proper place in the limelight.

"Wow." She was turning pages. She reached a colour plate. "Wow. It's not a bad likeness."

"Paget. That man is the bane of my life. It looks nothing like me."

She smirked and looked form the page to my face. "He's made you very handsome," she said. "I wouldn't complain."

"Those drawings have resulted in much unwanted correspondence," I said, "from young women."

"I bet," she said, and then we each realised that we had descended into common banter. She blushed and I knocked out my pipe on the mantel.

"Thank you," she said then. "I will read them. I want to be useful," she added, though I cannot imagine in what capacity she believes she can assist me. "If I can learn something about your – methods – then perhaps I can help you."

"Perhaps," I said, with a large attempt at graciousness. It is these efforts which tax me so in company.

"Thank you," she repeated. She smiled. "This isn't the first time I've done this, you know."

Her words echoed my own dear Watson, and I could not resist the urge to retort. "Read a book?"

Her look told me she perfectly understood my sarcasm. "Learn the detective trade," she said, turning as she left the room to add, "from a brilliant and difficult man."

Hmmn. I confess I did not have a ready response to that, so I let her leave, and refilled my pipe.


	18. Chapter 18

**Journal of Jenny Flint, Imperial typewritten. New York City 2014**

Let me write this first. I work for her. I am not like her. The demons -

Let me pause and begin again. It was never the intention to harm anyone. I was sent to sneak, to spy, to poke into places where my employer could not otherwise go. She believed he had the jewel. She was right in this. I still do not know why he had not sent it to the Museum with Dr Watson as first seemed the case. It does not matter now.

I went where my employer told me. She paid good money. More than I had ever seen. She knew my fear, my terror of the workhouse, the streets. She knew what I would do to avoid these. She paid, and promised my money would be safe in a bank, and that when I found the jewel in Mr Holmes' house I would collect the money and hear from her no more.

After two dealings with the demons, this last was my dearest wish.

I must pause and begin once again from the beginning of my arrival in this strange and wondrous place.

I had the Hungry Jewel in my hand, in my very fist, and had moved to press the button on my telegram bracelet as my employer had shown me - when Mr Holmes dashed the bracelet clean from my wrist. The controls moved as he did that, so I know not what buttons were pressed, but in any event, instead of arriving back in Poplar I fell.

I fell for a long time. At first it was down, just a moment of falling, like the moment of dread you feel when you dream that you step onto a solid place which gives way. Then I flew upwards, up and up, but with the blood rushing to my head as if I were being dangled out of a window.

I could not cry out, could not breathe even. The wind was in my face pressing the air from my breast. All around was pressure, forcing me up into an invisible sky. All was white and grey whirling wind, but I could not see, could not think.

I flew up and then my outstretched hands met a ceiling, and the world turned again and I was falling upwards and then downwards and I landed, arrived, hard on my bottom, in a bright noisy room.

I lay back for a moment, gasping, until I realised a man's voice, oddly distorted, was shouting st me. "Hey, hey," he was saying, in a thick accent. "What are you doing?" he cried then.

I came to my senses and looked about. I reeled then, for I was in a cab, but not of any kind I knew. The glass division between driver and passenger - that was clear. The speed at which we travelled, careless of other traffic - most certainly a cab. Yet the space in which I sat was low and wide, with broad windows all around, letting in golden sunlight. And there were no horses. A steam vehicle!

I turned my attention to the driver. He was protesting, and becoming unhappy with my silence. Eventually I understood that he was going to stop unless I showed him I could pay.

The vehicle came to a halt. I was conscious of a deep vibration in its belly, humming through the seat on which I rested.

"You, out, now," ordered the driver. "How did you change? You were an Asian woman. Now you white. What's going on? Get out." He pressed a switch and the door on my right flew open.

I scrambled out and immediately fell to my knees, for my legs had swelled during my flight and I could not walk.

I lay on the pavement, rubbing my ankles, as people seated around me in endless flow. I saw their shoes, their knees, the trousers of the men, and of the women, and then the bare legs of the women, naked calves walking right past my head.

I got to my feet. It was bright day time. Midday. I could hardly see the sky for the towering buildings all around. Sheer smooth towers of glass and polished stone, rising cleanly into a pure white sky.

I walked. Whichever direction I chose I seemed to be against the tide of people in the street. In itself, little different to Wapping but for the speed at which they walked, and the suddenness with which they stopped, as a body, causing me to launch into the person in front of me, and he or she to turn with a ferocious expression, and then apologies from me and they turned away forgetful of all that just occurred.

I walked until hunger overtook me.

I was in a district of shops and restaurants. I waited for a long time in a small square where thin trees grew in ugly stone tubs, to see how the cafe at its midst operated. The smell of fresh bread filled the warm air.

I watched the traffic as I waited on my bench. No one minded me so I stared as much as I wished.

I was in New York. In America. There could be no doubt of this. The vehicles - steam or smoke coming from their rears conforming my ideas about their propulsion - bore signs, and the signs bore proud declarations of their city. New York Deli. New York Motorfactors. And, over and over and over until my eyes saw yellow and my mind was fairly numbed, New York Taxi.

The cafe seemed to be a standard arrangement, to my relief. customers approached the tall counter, placed their order, paid, then waited at the far end for food to be ready. They then took their food to one of the silver tables laid out for the use of patrons.

I watched closely. The money was small notes barely longer than my hand, and printed in bright green on white. Some money took the form of a calling card passed to the vendor and then returned - placing the order on account.

I was relieved to find America so like what I know.

I still had no money, of course, nothing which would pass muster here.

But the sight of thick sandwiches and mugs of steaming milky coffee was impossible to resist.

I got up and wandered among the tables. My clothes attracted one woman's attention. I had been worried about looking English, looking, if I am frank, old fashioned in the marvellous modern country. but the woman merely laid her gaze on me for one instant and continued her conversation with a large black man sitting at her table.

Nobody else so much as looked at me. Either the people here are remarkably unobservant, or they are surrounded by so much strangeness, day after day, that any novelty is as nothing to them, and their eye passes over a woman in a long back gown or a man with the head of a dog or two girls chained together or a man painted entirely white or a band marching with drums and feather head dresses or a woman whose red suit seemed formed from her own skin it hung so suggestively, no, explicitly to her body - over all these things, without concern.

I, then, was no miracle.

I felt weary then as well as hungry, for I had traded one kind of invisibility for another. In London a servant is not noticed except by other servants. You walk among people all day and they do not see you unless you are their colleague, their compatriot.

Here I was invisible by dint of being not even remarkable enough for a glance. America is so diverse and so full of surprises that everyone has lost the capacity for wonder.

I waited and watched for an hour and then walked up to the serving end of the counter and took a man's order from under his nose and walked away.


	19. Chapter 19

**Journal of Jenny Flint, New York 2014**

As night began to fall I became afraid. All day I had been taken up with the marvel of my transportation to America and the strange sights and sounds of New York. But twilight began to close over the rectangles of sky between the towers, and I wondered where I would sleep and in what safety.

The people here did not seem dangerous. But every city has its criminals and as a stranger I did not know where the more insalubrious areas might lie.

There was a police force here, I saw. Men in black jackets and belts not unlike the uniform of our own regulars. Once or twice I saw them in hats – the only people to wear hats, I would note. Visitors to the city favoured hunting caps with a long peak to hold off the sun. They bore the city's initials and a red Valentine's heart. Everyone else – men, women, children – went bare headed.

I watched these police. They carried pistols and handcuffs. Some things are the same the world over. Like the police in London, the New York police seemed genial and affable when dealing with the pblic in general. They stood chatting with each other when they met, and friendly nods were given as they parted. They were just ordinary men, then, and not like the corrupt and vicios police of some countries.

Therefore, needing shelter for the night and being afraid to invent a place to sleep with I knew not what consequences, I waited besides a stall selling coffee and hot confections, until a policeman walked past. And then I stole a pretzel.

* * *

It was night time, and I had repeated my name and that of my master many times before I was shown upstairs in the police station – another tower, with ceilings made of dazzling white lights – and to an office with half-walls, the lower half being platered and painted brick, the upper only glass.

In this room was a large desk, smothered in papers, two chairs in front of the desk, and one behind it. And in that chair sat a large silver-haired man with a furrowed brow and an air of great weariness. The policeman who showed me in said shortly, "Captain Gregson," and pulled the door shut behind him.

The Captain was very good to me. Gave me coffee in a china cup. Offered me a seat like a lady. Then stared at me.

"I'm sorry sir," I said. "I've told you all I can."

"What's your employer's name?" he asked gruffly, but not unkindly. A man with daughters, I instantly perceived. His sympathy was like a warm beacon and I knew then that he would try to protect me, as his duties allowed.

"Mr Holmes," I said clearly. Their American accents were foreign, a little like Somerset, a little like the Irish of Belfast. I did not wish to be mistaken, and if there was any chance of contacting my master I must not miss it.

He started. "Holmes!"

"Mr Sherlock Holmes," I clarified.

He leaned forward across the desk. "If this is some bullshit -"

I blinked at his coarse language but repeated the name. "The truth," I said.

"Ok. Ok." He picked an object off his desk. It was small, square, seemingly heavy for its size. It gleamed, and as he stroked his thumb across its glassy surface it glowed alight. He held it to his ear as one would a telephone. "Yeah. Holmes."

I leapt to my feet. Could it be so simple?

"Yeah. I dunno. Thirty? Not, not Asian. What are you talking about? Slow down, man, you're babbling. No, I haven't seen her. Ok."

After this conversation we waited. And then at last the door opened and a slim man with a high domed forehead and large eyes, wearing workman's clothes, burst in.

He stared at me, and I at him, and it was hard to say which of us was the more disappointed.


	20. Chapter 20

Sherlock's audio blog

So. I have acquired a new associate, having lost Watson. This young woman, name of Jenny Flint, claims to work for me but not me. Another man with my name, operating out of London. But not, I think, simultaneously.

There have been many clues. Jenny's outfit for one. She appeared in Gregson's office tricked out as a Victorian housemaid, sans frilly white apron or mob cap. No make-up. That was what drew my eye first. Your role players and fancy dress purveyors cannot bear to have the zero cosmetic enhancement which genuine attention to historic detail would insist upon.

Her shoes, too - small boots with a louis heel, laced like ice skating boots. All correct. All leather. But they were worn, really very worn, and mended too. I saw scuffs which had been polished out, and a repair to the right heel. Not costume shoes.

All together it was the most realistic historic costume I have ever seen.

And then she spoke.

I had expected some faux Eliza Doolittle, some New Yorker attempting Dick van Dyke mockney. What I got was strong East End vowels, but perfect diction, every t and h pronounced, and the vocabulary and grammar in keeping with a girl who has been through the school system.

She greeted me courteously, but turned to Gregson and said, "This is not Mr Holmes. Not the Mr Holmes I know."

"Well, he's the only one we got ," Gregson said. "One British Sherlock Holmes. This mystery is all yours, Holmes, if you want it."

So we caught a cab back to the brownstone and I observed that Jenny watched everything carefully with the particular alertness of the thief seeking an opportunity for profit - or the slave looking for the moment to escape.

She watched with great interest, how I paid for the taxi. She looked at the traffic, seeming to catalogue its types in her mind. She stared at the people on the street and at the wheels of cars we paused beside at junctions.

When we reached the brownstone she seemed relieved. I let us in and ushered her into the living room.

She gazed around. "This is your home?"

"As you see it."

"How many staff do you keep?"

Ah. Checking who else might compete with her light fingered ways. "None. I am not a wealthy man, Miss Flint, and the most valuable thing in this house is in here." I tapped my temple.

She moved about the room, her boots clacking on the polished wooden floor, her full length black dress swishing. "What is your profession, Mr Holmes?"

"Call me Sherlock," I said. "And my work is as a consulting detective."

She spun round, eyes wide. "The same as Mr Holmes!"

"Apparently so." I perched in the edge of my red desk. "Tell me more about this namesake. Describe him."

She sat too, on the settee, and clasped her hands in her lap. Her eyes moved up and left - accessing memory rather than imagination.

"He is tall," she began. "His eyes are large and grey. He has a high brow and dark hair which is marked throughout with silver. A strong mode and steady jaw. He is thin but it is that thinness which belongs to a fighter : he has the strength of a navvy. He is nimble and quick and could as easily climb the outside of a house as walk up the stairs."

She paused, her eyes shining. "Go on," I prompted, for her tone and turn of phrase were fascinating.

"His voice is low and refined. He can be cold and harsh to anyone but he is not cruel by design. If you give him cause he will crush you. He shows mercy to those whose crimes are the cause of other wrongs. He is ruthless towards those who kill or maim for pleasure or profit. He can solve a puzzle about a government paper or the darkest mystery on a distant moor. There is no other man like him in London, or anywhere."

Here she blushed and added, "Or so I thought until today."

"Me too," I agreed. "So. I have a namesake who also practises my work. He is good looking and competent. All right then. What is his address?"

"221B Baker Street."

I jolted. "That was my London flat," I said slowly.

"My Mr Holmes has occupied it these thirty years," Jenny Flint contradicted.

I shook my head. "Thirty years ago it belonged to my grandfather. And his name was not Sherlock."

"Then there aee two Baker Streets,"she said with a shrug. "Though I don't know of any."

"There aren't," I said, reaching for the A-Z. A quick flip confirmed it. Other Baker Streets in London were too short for two hundred-plus numbers. Unless it was a tower block? "Describe his flat."

"His rooms are on the top three floors," Ms Flint said. "The housekeeper lives on the ground floor as you would expect. Staff occupy the attic. Mr Holmes has the floor up one flight of stairs, and his old friend Dr Watson had the room up two flights, but he is gone these six months now and that room stands unused."

Her words perfectly matched my old flat. And - Watson -

The situation was becoming more and more peculiar. I grabbed my mouse and began a search of street surveillance cameras on the route most likely taken by Watson's cab this morning. I traced a path between the brownstone, in the direction of Manhattan's most outrageously priced florists, and where Captain Gregson said Jenny Flint was thrown out.

I had hardly begun my task when there came a knock on the front door.

Ms Flint jumped up and then stopped. "It is not my place any more," she said wonderingly.

Her place?

It seems odd now but I very quickly dismissed any idea that Ms Flint was suffering from any form of psychosis. Her body language spoke truth. Her clothes, her speech - all pointed to one conclusion. Yet that conclusion was impossible.

I left her poking at the Apple and went to answer the door. When I opened it, the not-butler from yesterday was standing on ny top step.

"Is Miss Watson here?" he asked again as if continuing a conversation across several sunrises was perfectly normal.

"No," I began, but his eyes lit up and he dashed down the steps to the kerb, where a large black car was waiting. The car had a liveried driver . Well, if you are the partner of a law firm I suppose there are some little frills.

The bowler-hatted man ascended the steps once more, now huffing with the weight of a brown box covered in many inked stamps and handwritten stickers.

"This is for you, Mr Holmes," he said, although I had not given my name. "There are instructions within. It is vital, I repeat vital, that you follow them. Lives may depend on it."

He deposited the box in my arms and retraced his steps to the black sedan.

"Hold on a minute," I called. "Surely you don't expect me to accept a mystery box and then blindly follow mystery instructions?"

But the car was already pulling away.

I carried the box inside and lay it on the red desk's glossy surface. The thing was heavy.

I began to open it. Ms Flint came to watch.

Inside the packing carton were several smaller boxes, each tightly tied with string and labelled in a narrow, heavy handwriting. "Hmn. An elderly person, male, of the sort used to issuing commands and having them immediately obeyed."

The handwriting was also of a style not in regular use for over a century.

The parcels, which seemed to hold books, were clearly, almost patronisingly, labelled One, Two, Three. "Shades of Alice in Wonderland," I commented, but Dora leaned in eagerly.

"I'm saved," she exclaimed as my fingers touched the paper and felt it crackle with ancient dust. "That handwriting is Mr Holmeses. I would know it anywhere!"


	21. Chapter 21

Holmes' diary, London 1895

Again and again her beauty strikes me as if I had never seen a woman or known what it is to admire the aesthetic. I have never spent much time in female company. It has not interested me. The fair sex has its qualities - a quick Intuition which belongs to woman alone - but I have always sought the intellectual, and bar one, no female has ever come close to offering that comfortable equanimity of mind and humour as I found in the company of men, that is, of my few friends.

Yet Watson - I write of her so familiarly here! - provides that ease and makes me wonder anew if there is a comfort in life which I have omitted to pursue. For bodily needs I am indifferent, but this close association of the mind draws me in. A marriage of true minds. Something my own Watson quoted, when the poetical mood took him and he would draw down his copy of the Sonnets and attempt to amuse me with them.

This lady's mind is true and clear. although she hides a secret I have still to discover. The secret is not, I am confident, any slur to her character. Rather I suspect she harbours an unnecessary burden of guilt for an act in which she played a part, one of many.

The clarity she brings! I awoke from a positive stupor of reflection last night and found her still sitting on the armchair opposite, her limbs drawn up into the chair so that she was curled like a squirrel around its nut, reading a book from the stack she has taken from my shelves. She noticed my movement, and looked across at me, and seeing me conscious, met my eye and smiled, and returned to her page.

One glance. A smile as slight as the glimmer of a coach lamp passing across a kerbside puddle. Yet at this one sign I felt the construction of my logic shift, and one brick slid aside to admit another, and I leapt up and cried, "The cat caught too many mice!" and catching up my hat and Ulster, hurried to the scene of the most vicious murder and a puzzle I had been troubled by for some hours. The dead mice in the cat's basket were a certain sign that someone kept a bird of prey and had a ready supply of small mammals with which to feed it. And a bird of prey might be trained to strike a man down if he wore a certain hat or coat.

When I returned home, the car resolved, Watson lay on the settee, quite asleep, her book on her breast, my travelling coat drawn about her for warmth.

I hesitated to leave her there, for the night was cold. I lay a hand gently on her shoulder and spoke her name. "The case is finished," I said, "and the murderer in the cells. You must take some credit for it, Watson," (how naturally the name came to my lips of long habit), "for you have the gift of patient silence which works marvels on my thought processes."

She rose sleepily and shook my hand to comgratulate me. "Next time take me with you," she mumbled.

I was startled. In an instant I realised that she had been waiting up for me, wishing to know the outcome of my case. Only her exhaustion had prevented her being alert and attentive on my return. "All right," I said, and there, as she slipped from the sitting room to her own chamber, was that glimmer of a smile.


	22. Chapter 22

**London, 1895. Joan's notes, typewritten**

I must have been getting used to Holmes' weird ways, because when we were in the den one evening and he started hissing at me, I hardly blinked.

"Miss Watson!"

I looked up from the case notes I'd been studying. It was an amazing case, of a series of murders spread over a hundred years, all with the same MO. And yes, Holmes always referred to it as modus operandi. He actually studied Latin at school, and worse, was determined to use all that knowledge.

Holmes was perched on the edge of his chair like a gull on a clifftop, waiting to swoop on an innocent fish below. "Miss Watson!"

"I'm right here," I said, lowering the file.

"Hush! Don't startle it!" He raised himself on his toes, seemingly to launch himself our of the window.

"What-"

And then I saw it.

I make a point of not screaming if I can. Sherlock teases me for days if I squeal at one of his pranks, and besides, it's undignified. But I admit, when I saw what was outside the window at Baker Street, I let out a squeak.

"What the hell is that?"

"I do not know," said Holmes.

I stood up to get a closer look, and the - thing, creature, I don't know what the hell - on our windowsill spread its leathery wings and was gone.

Holmes leapt to the window and flung up the sash. He looked upwards first, which was clever. He and I leaned out, craning our necks to trace the thing, but it had vanished.

Holmes pursed his lips. He would not curse in front of a lady, of course, but I could see _Damn_ loud and clear in his eyes.

"Sorry," I said.

Holmes gave a faint nod. He turned away, drew out his engraved silver case, and lit a cigarette, with perfectly steady hands.

* * *

I parted the curtains a little to take another look at the street. The gas lamps fascinated me. So modern. So much about this place was, in fact, modern. In another ten years there would be cars on these streets.

"Describe what you saw," instructed Holmes when we had given up starting from the window for another sight of the creature.

"It was the size of child," I said. " It had hands with black palms. The palms pressed against the glass looked ... sticky. Like they would leave a snail trail."

"Yes." Holmes sprang up and peered at the window pane. "There is a residue."

I was about to suggest we collect a sample, but stopped. Where could we send it?

"What else," he said.

"Kind of triangular, pinched black face with stubbly hair all over it and below rinter, goat eyes."

"What else," he said.

I hesitated. This was the impossible part.

"Whatever you observed," said Holmes. "I saw it too, recollect. But I wish to corroborate my own inevitably flawed perceptions." He spoke like a man who had no belief whatsoever that his perception could be flawed, but I took his point.

I drew a breath. "It had. OK. It had wings."

He nodded. "Tell me. What did it put you in mind of, Miss Watson?"

There could be no other answer. Still I was reluctant. But then I remembered that I had travelled through time. I spoke. "A demon."


	23. Chapter 23

**Holmes' diary, London 1985**

I arranged the facts in my mind's eye before the flames. The creature had not reappeared, but still I stood at the window. Miss Watson slept on the sofa behind me.

Fact. I had lost the jewel. The Hungry Jewel of great renown and great value.

Fact. I had gained a bracelet device.

Fact. Jenny Flint vanished before my eyes.

The flames danced long before I could move onward from that one.

Fact. Miss Watson had knowledge new to me, new seemingly to this world, impossible yet plausible knowledge.

Fact. Watson disappeared suddenly and no trace of him can be found.

I screwed up my face in effort to make my brain turn these knowns into a clue as to the unknown.

Logic. If Jenny Flint could disappear, could Watson disappear? Could Miss Watson appear?

Logic. Jenny Flint stole the jewel. It was her sole purpose in my household. When she had achieved her purpose, she turned to the bracelet for assistance. Therefore the bracelet, the device, had also a purpose in the theft of the jewel from me.

Logic. A bracelet which could transport persons and objects has obvious benefits to criminal activity

This could make the bracelet, now in my strongbox, the most valuable object on earth.

And yet - a person or group in possession of this object, nonetheless sought out the jewel.

Conclusion. The jewel has some property so valuable that advanced transportation is s secondary and mundane concern.

Valuable to whom?

The lascars in whose possession Watson and I found the jewel, found it had got it from a gang of street urchins. The men told us, when encouraged with a pistol, that the urchins were strange children, with black faces. The men cried demon, and made signs to ward off the evil eye. Still they stole from these chimney sweeps. Their superstition was not quite strong enough to overcome their greed.

The lascars were not the original thieves of the jewel, that we knew. The urchins - these I had dismissed as another thread in the rope of thievery which led back back to the Museum. How would urchins steal from a vault beneath Britain's most prestigious exhibition?

Yet in skipping over the black faced urchins I had perhaps made a grave error.

Could it be that this group, unlikely as they seemed, were the real perpetrators of the crime?

They had terrified hardened sailors, the mercenaries of the commercial waves, men who put themselves for hire in any port and who feared nothing. Who were feared, rightly, themselves.

Black faces, black faces...

"Chimney sweeps," said a voice and I started.

Miss Watson was awake.

"I'm sorry?" How I dislike my thoughts to be disturbed.

"You said black faces. I said chimney sweeps." She sat up, pushing aside the blanket I had cast over her. Her hair was disarrayed around her shoulders.

"Chimney sweeps - a possibility. And yet. The lascars would have no terror of sweeps. Or any kind of dirty face. They are common enough." I sighed.

Miss Watson was hesitating in a manner most unlike her customary direct approach. "Uh... How many... Black people ate there in London? I mean -"

Miss Watson seemed excessively delicate about the subject. "There is a thriving black population," I informed her. "Freed slaves and men from countries never enslaved, alike."

"Right." Her embarrassment only increased at my workaday handling of the subject. Clearly her world is awash in racial sensitivity.

I rose. "It is late. You were asleep just now. I feel it is time for bed. I have sent my network of informants out into the boroughs to find out what they may about the strange creature we both saw. Until they return, there is little we can achieve in wakefulness."

"You're going to stay up all night, aren't you," she said with her customary bluntness.

"I will light the lamp for you," I offered. "As you seem unfamiliar with the process."

"No," she said. "I'm staying up too."

"Clearly you are tired."

"Clearly so are you. I'm a doctor, remember. I can see fatigue."

"I have the support of nicotine," I told her.

"I have the support of caffeine," she said.

"No, you don't," I said.

She stared at me, until to my own surprise I conceded the point, and rang the bell for coffee.


	24. Chapter 24

**Joan's notes, typewritten, London 1895**

Holmes' network of urchins and ne'er-do-wells had gone out into the dens and alleys of London. Swifter than the internet, they had come at his whistle and then dispersed throughout the city, to find out about the demons.

Holmes threw books about meanwhile, and paced, and smoked. He tried to send me to bed but I ignored his hints. Time travel is one thing. Malevolent looking supernatural creatures are another. "I think you should tell the staff," I said.

"It would only cause distress," he said. "And I have no way to ease it."

I saw his point.

He peered at me keenly. "You are afraid," he said.

"I want to know what the hell that was," I said. "There must be an explanation for it. I won't be able to sleep until I know."

"A commendably rational view," Holmes said.

With a look I dared him to add anything along the lines of, For A Woman.

He gave a wary glance, and tapped his latest smoke against the cover of his silver cigarette case.

So we waited, me sitting still in my armchair with a fat book of English folklore, Holmes bounding about, muttering and smoking. Every few minutes he leaned his cheek to the window pane to see if the urchins had returned. He had spread his net, and must be patient until its catch came in.

And at last it did: back came the stories, from all quarters, of men, or beasts, with hunched bodies and black faces.

And the general view was that they were demons. Just as we thought.

* * *

"Demons," said Holmes. "For months, demons have been seen in every borough." He flicked his eyes at me. "I do not believe this is the clumsy description of people unaccustomed to seeing strangers. London has long been home to persons from all over the globe."

"Also, wings," I said.

"Indeed." He pondered. "The creatures have been seen principally at night. That might account for it. However what is strangest of all about this phenomenon is that it has not until now come to my attention."

I sighed.

"I am used to knowing every event in London," Holmes said, clearly stung by my scorn at his arrogance. "If a horde of demons - or creatures which give the momentary appearance of a demon, such as a baboon or howler monkey - have arrived in the city, I would expect to be informed within the hour."

"Right. They should check in with you, like visiting the ambassador."

He swivelled away from me and stood sulking at the window. I was about to suggest we get breakfast and consider new leads, when he swung round. His eyes were bright. "The ambassador," he said. "Miss Watson, your sarcastic remark has provided an interesting new approach to this mystery."

I waited.

"There is a man," Holmes said. he strode up and down the room, tobacco momentarily forgotten. "A man who sits at the centre of all that is unnatural in England. I have met his traces many times in the course of my investigations, and on each occasion I have been struck by the strength of his influence. If demons were indeed among us, this is the person I deem most likely to have information on it."

"All right, who?"

Holmes smiled. "The Count."


	25. Chapter 25

**Joan's notes. London 1895**

Enquiries swiftly established that Holmes' contact, the Count, was not in town, but in his country home in the county of Yorkshire. I put this notebook in my pocket, and sat examining an atlas while Holmes packed an overnight bag.

Yorkshire is in the north of England, hundreds of miles from London, yet Holmes referred to going there as if it would be the easiest thing in the world.

"I will take a train, Miss Watson. We are not in the middle ages. I will be there in a matter of hours."

"We will be."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm coming too."

Naturally this led to an argument. Holmes tossed his carpet bag - which was actually made of a piece of carpet - on the couch and stood complaining.

"It would be highly unusual for you to be with me. How could I explain your presence? You cannot be my sister!"

"A sister in law, perhaps," I suggested.

He snorted. "Worse! Where is my brother? Why would he allow his wife to travel in company with me? We are proposing being from home some several nights, Miss Watson."

"Your brother is dead and I am his widow," I said.

"My brother is well known and he is not married," Holmes retorted.

This was a surprise, for I would have sworn Holmes was without a relative in the world. "Ok," I said. "Then we're married. Whatever. It just doesn't matter. You deal in the world of lies every day – make up a convincing one!"

He pursed his lips and eyed me narrowly. "It would be far better if you were to remain here."

"But I am right in the middle of all this! I'm not being left behind like some child while you –"

"All right." He held up his hand. Clearly my outburst was an enormous strain on his delicate brain. Huh. "You may accompany me as my wife."

I took a deep breath and let it out. Why am I always arguing with Holmes? Mrs Hudson must think we have some big history, but really it is just a big – personality clash. He won't back down and neither will I and we have to come to yelling and pointing fingers before one of us sees logic.

"Thank you," I said.

He dismissed this with a wave and a sneer. "We will appear in the guise ... of vampire hunters."

He allowed the words to ring around the room, and his eyes sparkled with triumph at my gaping face.

"Vampire hunters," I repeated, my victory at being permitted to go with him already forgotten. "But the count –"

"There is a large trade in stories of old folk horrors," Holmes said. "The village sells postcards and trinkets and relics supposedly from the coffins of the local vanquished demon, and so on and so forth. The count's attention will be no more aroused by our arrival than by the arrival of the milkman – far less, since he must keep up the appearance of drinking milk, no matter his real preferences."

"Are you saying...?" It was crazy.

"Yes. He believes himself a blood sucker."

There is no response to that, so I kept quiet.

"Pack a bag," he said. "A lady travels with a small piece of luggage. We will leave at once. And ask Mrs Hudson to include stout boots, for the moors are a wild and lonely place – and very muddy."

"Right. Mud. Why did I want to do this again?" But I smiled at him to show that it was a joke, and made to leave.

He stopped me with a lifted finger. "One more thing."

He crossed to his desk and unlocked it with a key from his pocket. "It will look strange otherwise."

He took out an envelope and removed from that a tiny gold ring. "Wear this," he instructed, giving it to me. "Mrs Smith."

"Right. Good point. Mr Smith."

He quirked his eyebrow sardonically at me as I put the ring on. It was a little loose, but given I have to wear gloves most of the time that hardly mattered.

"Is that a thing here too?" I asked. Clandestine couples checking into hotels as Mr and Mrs Smith?"

"Stout boots," said Holmes, and swept away to telegram Yorkshire.


	26. Chapter 26

**Joan's notes. London and Yorkshire, 1895**

Train travel was something new. "First class," Holmes said as we swept past a melee of travellers with piles of luggage – mostly brown leather suitcases strapped up and tied with bits of string and many paper labels.

I carried my own bag, and noticed several women doing likewise. Ah, feminism. Or, perhaps, extreme chauvinism. It was confusing here. Women can be so independent – working jobs, living away from the family home, becoming engaged without the need for parental permission – and yet are so restricted: only certain jobs are open to them, only certain places to rent, and to choose a marriage unwisely condemns you to a life of misery, because divorce here is only for the wealthy and well-connected.

We had a tiny carriage to ourselves, with facing benches. Holmes flung my travelling bag and his into the mesh racks above our heads, then sat down opposite me.

The rain pulled away from the station with giant scrapes and whistles. The track sounded as if it was breaking apart under the weight of the behemoth, but with thunderous explosions of steam we picked up speed and soon were flying out of London.

It was pleasant to be alone, with plenty to look at and no one to hear if I asked stupid questions. "Talk to me," I asked Holmes. "Tell me what I'm seeing."

"I wish to think," he said, but rolled his eyes and pointed out of the window at row upon row of small houses, crammed together with the back wall of the front house joining, actually joining, the back wall of the behind. "What do you think you see?"

"Extreme poverty," I said.

"Extreme progress," he answered. "Or so it seems on the face of it. What efficiency it is to house people so close together and close to their workplaces! How companionable and convenient to everyone, that their family and neighbours be immediately at hand. it is the reproduction of village life in microcosm."

He saw my horrified look and smiled. "Efficiency it is not. There are many reasons to decry the back to backs, but my principal one is that of absolute _inefficiency._ For when people live close together, a single case of disease is quickly spread to forty others. When a dead dog lands in a shared well, five hundred people fall ill. When a fire ravages a single house, forty other hoses fall too. This is gross inefficiency – because a tiny event affecting a single man can ruin the workforce for an entire factory or office."

He sat back, watching my face to see what I would say.

"Very humanitarian," I said.

"You sneer, Miss Watson," he said. "Perhaps you expected me to romanticise the benefits of fresh air, clean water and green spaces in which to recuperate during the working man's few hours of leisure. But I find that sentiment rarely affects mill owners and factory foremen. Appealing to efficiency must be the best way forward to improving the lives of the working classes."

I looked out of the window at the rows and rows of houses. White washing flapped in the wintry breeze. "I guess you're right," I said, and he smirked again.

As we moved north out of London, the washing hung not on lines between houses, but on hedges outside cottages. I pegged with greater interest, and Holmes read a stack of newspapers and watched my reactions to the view.

Great spaces opened up on either side of the train. The pale colours of winter, a land bleached by frost, mist and the low slant of champagne coloured sunlight, showed an England I had never seen. Roads were mud. They were lanes. Blacktop was almost non existent.

The train stopped only occasionally at first as we hurtled out of London, but as we neared Yorkshire the stops became more frequent. I saw prosperous market towns and more prosperous factory towns. Outside one such, a giant black wheel slowly turned, showing where a coal shaft dropped down and buckets of fuel were drawn up by the power of steam and the very coal being mined.

"Actually, most engine houses spend their energy pumping water out of the tunnels," Holmes said when I commented. "Keeping the workings dry is one of the world's greatest engineering challenges, and one which is constantly being met, and constantly thwarted by nature."

He leaned towards the window, peering at the enormous wheel. "In these parts lime is as frequently the goal as other types of treasure. Lime has many purposes," he added, seeing that I did not understand. "It is vital, for example, in the building trade. Cement, Watson, cement."

"Mrs Smith," I corrected him.

He huffed at being caught out. "Even so." He launched his arm across the carriage and caught my gloved hand. "And should I hold your hand tenderly, and caress it like so?"

He gave a hideous approximation of a lover's smile.

"No thanks," I said, pulling my hand away. "You could call me Joan, though."

"We are a formal married couple," he declared. "Such niceties are reserved for private moments."

"Fair enough."

I studied him. He was being freshly weird about the married couple thing. I guess he hated the idea of not being himself, not being a bachelor. Yet for cases, he had told me himself, he had posed as many things – soldier, doctor, architect, fiancée. Perhaps this seemed personal because it was me. An actual, terrifying woman.

Honestly.

"I might have to take your arm," I warned him. "And generally stand next to you."

He frowned. "You mock me," he said.

"Yup."

"Don't."

"Ah, now you're getting the pattern of married life. The constant bickering. The irritation of living in close company with someone every minute of every day. The endless power struggle to see who is in charge."

He looked at me curiously. "But you have never been married."

I had never said as much. "No," I admitted. "But I have lived with people."

His eyes went absolutely wide. I realised all that he was reading into that statement, and what it would mean to his old time ears. "Including my current colleague Sherlock," I added. "We share everything in the house. Except a bed."

He turned his face away with an expression of distaste for my bluntness.

"I'm just telling you," I said. "Because this is not shocking to me. I am not worried about my reputation. I am no blushing teenager on her first date."

His eyebrows were up in his hairline.

God, did he really think I had reached the age I am, still a virgin? Perhaps he did. Perhaps he would never have accepted me under his roof unless he believed that.

I tried to explain. "I know things are different here. I get it –"

"You patently do not!" Spoken sharply, his cane clutched in his hand, his face stll turned away from me and resolutely towards the wintry view.

"I'm sorry. I am not trying to offend you."

"You succeed remarkably well for so little effort."

"Holmes," I said. "You are the only friend I have in this place. I respect your views. But I don't have to share them."

He gave a dramatic shrug at that, like a pastiche of a Frenchman. "Well. Then let us discuss it no further."

"Ok. But you might have to let me know if I do something which is totally unacceptable. Just – shush me or something."

Oh god. Was I really inciting the world's most pedantic man to pick holes in everything I did? Yes. I had to. He was so obviously upset by the situation.

"I will be guided by you," I said firmly.

He turned back at last, and began to speak of music, and the hypnotism of beasts.

I kept quiet and just listened, watching his lively grey eyes and mobile expressions, and wondered what went on in the compartment of his personality most usually reserved for a heart.


	27. Chapter 27

**Joan's notes, Yorkshire 1895**

When we arrived at York we changed trains, and made our way more slowly to a small market town by the name of Thirby. At the station there, the porter ordered us a cab to take us out to the village of Garth some way into the moors. The journey had taken up the afternoon, and it was already twilight as Holmes helped me down from the carriage and under the porch of a small stone pub, I guess an inn, in Garth. It was almost the only house – that, a couple of very small cottages a church so small as to be a chapel.

The innkeeper came out to welcome us and spent a lot of time irritating the hell out of Holmes with chatter about our visit and what vampires we were hoping to see. "Whitby is your place, sir," he kept saying. "Plenty of bloodsuckers up that way! I can arrange for transport, no bother at all, sir."

"If I had wanted to go to Whitby I would now be in Whitby," Holmes said.

I smiled at the man and asked if he could get us some dinner.

"Just a few cold meats and some eggs," he said apologetically. "It's already shaping up to be a hard one in these parts, and there's been that much theft that even the well to do are having to tighten their belts."

"What kind of theft?" Holmes asked, his ears pricking up at the hint of trouble. "Gold, valuables?"

"No sir. Animals. Livestock, large and small. Largest a sheep. Smallest a guinea hen. And the one benefit is, there's no mice to be found in any house for ten mile round about."

"Foxes," dismissed Holmes. "They hunt more keenly when the weather draws in."

"No sir," said the innkeeper. We were by this point standing in his small front parlour, by the fire. It was a clean room but with just a few wooden chairs. Nothing comfortable. My vision of curling up by a roaring fire, wrapped up in a blanket and with furs and cushions all around me, faded abruptly. This was not some idyllic English retreat. This was a chilly house with a stone floor and a constant draught round my ankles. I had woollen hose on, but the cold cut straight through that. For the first time I wished more more petticoats instead of fewer.

"If not foxes then what?" asked Holmes. "You're surely not suggesting that men are involved? Sheep, yes, perhaps, even chickens - but do you really think people have become so desperate as to hunt mice?"

"Some say 'tis the vampire himself," said the innkeeper in a hollow tone designed to strike fear into the heart of the tourist. "He sends his demons out to get blood where they can and bring him back the spoils so that he can feast without leaving his lair."

Holmes stared at the innkeeper. "Hmmn," he said. "I think dinner. Yes?"

He passed the man a coin, and the innkeeper immediately touched his cap and disappeared to find us food.

"What a relief," said Holmes. "I thought he was going to invite us to buy some garlic and holy wafers to place around our beds."

"I guess it helps his business to have a local legend," I said. "The mysterious count who can appear and disappear at will." I had been reading the folk stories from one of Holmes' books.

"Indeed. Yet I find the judicious application of half a crown can often have a similar effect." And he patted the pocket from which he had taken the coin for the innkeeper.

I smiled, and he smiled back, and we sat in chairs as close to the fire as we could bear and waited for our dinner.

After dinner there was nothing to do. I wrote in my journal, very awkwardly – I can't get used to the pens here – give me a Bic any day – and Holmes read the local newspaper and then sat staring into the flames and tapping his foot on the stone flags of the floor.

It was fully dark outside and the wind had got up. To stretch my legs I stood up and looked out of the window. "It's completely clear," I said. "It will be cold tonight."

"Frost is already forming along the branches of the hawthorn," Holmes agreed, pointing it out – a gnarled tree at the edge of the village green opposite the inn. "I think it would be as well to turn in now. Ask for a maid to go up with you and help you." This in a low voice.

But there was no maid. The innkeeper was very apologetic. His wife and his daughter were both in York. A sick relative. The way he said it made me suspicious. "What kind of sickness?" I asked.

He hesitated. "In truth marm, I sent them away last week. Things round here got too peculiar and I wanted my girl away. My wife took her, and they'll come back in the spring. Til then, I make shift for myself. Begging your pardon for the inconvenience."

We were not the only guests of the inn. A party of young men came in as we stood talking, and occupied the whole parlour with cries for ale and much joshing about their day's adventures – which seemed to revolve around shooting things.

"I did not think it was the season for shooting," said Holmes.

"It's not so important up here," said one of the men, and the others laughed.

"Is that so? I would have thought a rural area like this would stick even more rigidly to a schedule designed to preserve enough young fowl for next year's hunting as well as this. But then, what do I know, I am from town as you can doubtless detect."

He sneered at them and offered me his arm. "Innkeeper, please show us to our rooms."

There was a general low whooping from the crowd as they noticed me. My face has that effect on people here. Ok, it sometimes had that effect on people back home. What is it about an asian woman that makes men feel they have the right to ogle and mumble dirty ideas?

In NYC I'd give them a few ripe suggestions of my own. Here that was impossible. I could only make a withering glance and hope they got frostbite in intimate places.

"I'm sorry sir. I've been meaning to mention. Your wire said you and your wife. I have booked you into the one room, sir. All my others are taken by these young – gentlemen."

"I see," said Holmes, but he looked furious. "Well, show us up."

Every eye was on me as Holmes ushered me from the room. As I put my foot upon the first step, Holmes whipped round suddenly and addressed the parlour of young rowdies.

"Lay your eyes one more time on my wife in that lascivious manner and I will tan the hide of every one of you. Get some manners, sirs!"

He spun round and gestured at me to proceed.

"Wow," I said softly as we closed the door of our room behind us. "You're scary when you want to be."

"I cannot abide discourtesy," he said.

"Thanks," I said. "I get that a lot. People just – you know. It's just part of being a woman."

He frowned and touched his finger to my chin. "Your beauty is taken as an invitation for comment and staring by the lower sort of person. But you need not accept such behaviour."

I did not know what to say to this so I said nothing. He dropped his hand and went to examine the room.

It was depressing enough. Floorboards, no rugs anywhere, and icy breezes between the boards. Thin curtains, two hard chairs in the bay of the window, one worn armchair by the fire, and a table with a china washbowl and jug.

"All mod cons," I muttered.

And there was just one iron bed.

Oh, this was going to be just great.


	28. Chapter 28

**Joan's notes, Yorkshire 1895**

It was cold, bitingly cold, in our upstairs room. A fire had been lit, but obviously not until late. The heat had not even begun to penetrate the room before it had to be banked up for the night.

I opened my travelling bag, looked at the nightdress I had brought with me and closed it up again.

"Socks," said Holmes.

He was standing at the windows, gazing out into the village green. He spoke without turning round.

"Sorry what?"

"Socks." His hand moved behind him in a gesture towards the armchair where his bag tested. "In my bag. Bed socks. I have two pairs with me. Use one."

I went to his bag. He would know, of course, the moment I opened it. Yet he did not turn round, seemed intent on the moonlit green. I unclasped the bag and dug around carefully. His things were packed with great precision.

"Mind the gun," Holmes said casually from the window.

"Gun. Right."

"A mere precaution. The Count, and his people, are dangerous."

I found a woollen bundle and pulled out socks. One pair I stuffed back into the bag.

"I'm not getting undressed," I said to Holmes' back. "It's too cold. I'm just getting into bed as I am."

He turned at once. "You'll find it uncomfortable. The bones in your dress, your, your, personal garments -"

His delicacy! A man who could look upon a smashed skull and observe the telltale trace of cricketers oil on the bloodied hair, yet he was unable to refer to a woman's underwear.

However, I took his point. "Oh."

Also, Alice helped me in and out of the carapace, as I had come to think of my dress, every day. I was pretty sure that if I tried to undress myself I would wreck it.

"Yes," said Holmes his back to me once again.

"Sorry what?"

"Yes, I can assist." This in a tone of great weariness. "If you permit me."

"Thank you."

I turned my back to him and he approached, still puffing on the wretched pipe, and unlaced the top four inches or so of my dress, very briskly. "Thanks."

He moved away. "I'll take the chair, of course."

"No," I told him. "We need to conserve body heat. In this level of cold you actually could freeze in your sleep. Share the bed."

He turned his face to me, outraged.

"Oh for God's sake," I said. "This is practical, logical and vital. And we are supposed to be married."

"But we are not married. Bad enough to be in one chamber -"

Bohemian Holmes had vanished, and Patriarchal Stickler for Social Mores Holmes had materialised in his place. "What happened to hang society?" I demanded. "What happened to carving your own moral code?"

"That applies to my work," he said stiffly. "Not my personal habits."

"Listen," I told him. "We are going to share this bed and it is going to keep us warm. That's it, that's all, end of, ok? Just forget that I am a woman."

Not that he ever knew I was one. His willingness to call me Watson spoke volumes about my place in the colleague-versus-female scale.

Suddenly it struck me that perhaps it was not my virtue under consideration, but his own. That he was worried I might molest him, dishonour him with my twenty-first century wantonness. "Holmes," I said in a softer tone. "I promise there will be no - nothing improper. Ok?"

He spun round, his hand on his cravat. "You need not reassure me. This is a logical solution to our problem at hand. Of course I acquiesce. I will allow you a few moments to compose yourself before joining you."

I nodded my gratitude at our eventual agreement.

In bed I dragged the covers up round my chin and curled into a ball, trying not to lose the warmth of my own body to the heat sink of chilled sheets and blankets. A draught was persistent across my face. My nose was cold. My feet were freezing but I could not bear to curl them under me and cool down any other part of me with the contact.

The bed creaked: Holmes getting in, also fully dressed except coat, shoes and cravat. The playboy mansion this was not. I chuckled despite my chattering teeth.

"What?" Holmes asked.

"A silly thought," I said. I did not dare explain. "I think the cold is actually stopping my brain."

"Frostbite on the brain lobes would be both painful and irreversible," he mused.

The blankets were piled on top of us and into the valley between us. I relaxed. "Do you know that during treatment of cancer, they give the patient a skull cap chilled with ice water?" I asked.

"Why?" His interest, keen, pouring across the bed towards me.

"Its to slow down hair loss during chemotherapy. The drugs are given, but because of restricted circulation to the scalp due to cold, the drug does not act as powerfully there and the patient has a better chance of avoiding hair loss."

"Fascinating," he breathed, and I realised I had set myself up for an all-night discussion of oncology treatments. "Especially important for women," Holmes added, and his assumption was so accurate that I found myself, curled up facing away from him, making a sarcastic face. His professions of innocence around women were utter bull. Holmes has a good and detailed grasp of female psychology. He just doesn't much like it, is all, and would rather not subject himself to it. Makes sense.

"We're not really getting the benefit here," I said then. "Come closer."

It shocked me a little, when I thought that I was essentially inviting him to spoon me, in bed, but all the same I pressed the point.

"I would rather not," he said, adding before I could argue, "but I will."

He wriggled across the bed and came to rest on his back next to me. His shoulder touched my back.

"That's much better," I said. "God, you're fantastically warm."

"No. You are simply very cold."

He shifted then. "Forgive me," he murmured, and turned on his side and pressed his body against my back. "I had not appreciated how cold you were," he said. His face was completely clear of me, and his whole stance was tense and unhappy.

"Keeping warm," I said. "That's the point. The only point."

The shared warmth worked its magic. I felt myself drifting.

"Miss Watson?" His whisper, hot across my scalp.

"Yes."

"Tell me at once if this offends you."

His arm passed over my waist and rested across me.

"It's fine," I mumbled.

An impulse seized me. "Tell me if this offends you," I said, and clasped his cold fingers with my own. He twitched and shuddered as if in disgust, but allowed me to hold his hand and rub his fingers.

It was strange, my longing to comfort him. maybe I just wanted to get some reaction from him, some normal, human reaction. But watching him work – and he was magnificent at work – I still felt primarily pity, for such a lonely life, and a life where he had lost his one friend. I wanted to give him a hug. Around fifty percent of the time, I realised. The rest of the time I wanted to shake him. Ok, that's unfair. Mostly he was just incredibly good at what he did – I existed in a near permanent state of awe. But sometimes he was just downright annoying.

But he had feelings and he was a human being, no matter how much he despised the weakness of people with their emotions and softness. I knew, I just knew that he yearned for company and comfort the same as everyone else. He denied it to himself and kept busy with work. How well I knew that particular trait.

I lay back against him, stroking his hand and wishing I cold ask him about his life. He would hate that, though, even more than this enforced intimacy. Silence was the key if he was not to leap from the bed and spend the night in frozen obstinacy in the armchair.

After a while his thumb came down over my fingers, stopping me from any more stroking. I lay still and listened to him breathing. And admitted to myself that the cuddling was for my benefit as much as his, not the warmth but the closeness. I had not had a hug of any description since I got here. Not one person to console me, to cheer me , to touch me. Only Holmes, the least likely person in the world to display physical affection.

It occurred to me then that this might be the very first time he had ever been in bed with a woman. (Or man?) His starchy morality about marriage and intimacy might well have prevented any kind of physical contact.

Men went to brothels though, didn't they?

Maybe not this man. It was a little hard to imagine.

Also, I had to not imagine anything of the sort, given he was lying right with me and knowing him could probably read my mind.

"Miss Watson," he said.

"-Yes?" How guilty did I sound?

"Stop thinking and sleep."

"Says you."

He chuckled, then stopped himself abruptly. I wonder what it would be like if one day he did not stop himself. "Are you comfortable?"

"Amazingly so, yes."

Oh, that was a bad thing to say. Yes, I am enjoying the sensation of your body next to mine, even though we are not married and you had to stop me ravishing your hand just now because it offended your sense of propriety.

But he just said, "Then sleep." I felt a hesitant pressure from his fingers around mine.

He talked to me then, seeming to want distraction, about a lake and how it frosted by stages, and how by taking samples of the ice, certain locals could accurately predict the weather for the next six to eight months.

I dozed off at last, soaking up his heat, grateful that he was still a warm human being despite all his protests about thought, brain and worthless emotions.

My final coherent thought, before sleep overtook me, was that I'd never done anything like this with Sherlock, and that now, that seemed strange.


	29. Chapter 29

And introducing Benedict Cumberbatch as the Count! Well, I think he would be perfect in this role. -Sef

xxx

 **Joan's notes, London, 1895**

Well, our country visit was a bust. Freezing cold, sticky mud and hours on draughty trains, and it turns out that the count was at his hotel in London. So back we came, and Holmes made an appointment to visit the count at his London hotel.

"We must dress well," Holmes had told me as we readied ourselves for the visit. "The Count is most particular and his people will not allow us through the door unless we seem the sort of person he is accustomed to."

"What's he the count of?" I asked as Holmes held out my bonnet. It was clear that Holmes expected me to be the most likely one to let the side down with dress.

"A very ancient region in Europe. But he has lived in England a long time, secluded, almost hermitic. It is a rare thing that he grants an audience."

"Yes, how did you persuade him?"

Holmes indicated the draft of his telegram. "I sent this to his residence."

I read the pencil scrawl. "Your demons are becoming unruly. Let us discuss a solution. Holmes."

Holmes inspected me now, his eyes on my deep ruby dress and black high frill collar jacket. My hat was red too, and my boots were polished. "You are a jewel, if a little ... rough cut." He tidied my collar as if he had the perfect right to adjust my dress. I don't know what it is that gives him this freedom. He is certainly not as free and easy with other woman. Is it because I am not from this time and he imagines I have a different sense of personal space? Or is it just his own arrogant possessiveness toward someone within his own household? I can't see Mrs Hudson being amended the way I am. "Now you are perfect," Holmes said, still frowning. "However it is cold. Take my coat, I will wear the grey."

He lifted a woollen coat from the stand and flung it around my shoulders. Again he took the opportunity to adjust me within the coat, settling it around me like a cape. You're enjoying this, I thought, but it was such a weird idea that I didn't say anything. From any other man this might be flirting, or at any rate, inappropriate touching, but I could not believe it of Holmes.

He hailed a cab and helped me into it and we rattled off through the streets of the West End until we reached Paddington. Beyond the great station was a great hotel, a massive edifice with many floors and many windows decorated with carved stone surrounds. A rack of electric lights illuminated the front door and the sign announced that this was the Hotel Metropolitain.

Holmes and I entered the lobby and approached the desk manager. "The Count," Holmes said, handing in his card. "He is expecting me."

"That is his private lift," said the man, pointing to a single brass door separated from the other lifts. "You will have to go p alone, I'm afraid sir. None of the staff will attend him."

"Weird," I said as the inner lift cage closed to Holmes' tug. He pressed the single button.

"The Count is a dangerous man," Holmes said. "It is as well that you are beautiful, for this will distract him., but do not let him touch you, even for a moment. Once he has you in his grasp there is no escape."

"You're not reassuring me, Holmes," I told him as the bell dinged.

"I do not mean to," Holmes said. We stepped out into a tiny lobby.

He knocked on the larger of two doors in the silent lobby. Here our feet sank into the carpet, which was dark blood-red and the walls painted deep brown. The smaller door looked like all the others we'd since at the Metropolitain - gilt-edged, ornate. The larger door was very stout and plain, as if not part of the original design of the hotel.

The door opened and a small woman stood there. She was wizened and old but clearly had once been very beautiful. She had large eyes and a mouth stained red with rouge. Her gray hair was piled on her head in an extravagant style which its limpness could not quite sustain.

She scowled when she saw me, and sniffed at my gown and my hat and my face in general. Then she let us in.

The Count's rooms were spacious and opulent. Gas lights threw a glow over everything, which was lucky because the red velvet curtains were drawn. Leather studded armchairs were placed next to a fire, and many bookcases, vases of palms, and tiny dark paintings adorned the space.

The Count sat in one of the armchairs. "Excuse me if I do not get up," he said in a faint voice, his head bowed. He extended a hand, a pale, shrunken hand, and indicated that we should sit.

He had white hair and was wrapped in a thick robe, although he sat right next to the fire and the room was warm, stiflingly warm.

"Sherlock Holmes," said Holmes briskly, "and my associate and client, Miss Watson." He did not offer his hand.

"So, so," said the Count in his delicate foreign accent. He still had not raised his head. "Sit. Sit."

I sat in the chair nearest him. As his eyes caught my shoes he suddenly jerked ip his head to look at me.

I was captured by his gaze.

He was pale, very pale, white skin which had not seen sunlight for years. His eyes were almost clear, they were such a light blue colour – but they were sharp and bright, the eyes of a young man.

And as he rose, casting off the robe, and extended his hand to me, his hair seemed no longer white, but only grey, and as he took a strong quick step towards me, it seemed black.

"Miss Watson!" he exclaimed in a rounded baritone, and smiled, a smile of great charm and gallantry.

I remembered Holmes' advice but it was awkward not to rise too and shake the Count's hand.

Holmes moved to place himself between us. "It is of great interest to meet you after so many years," Holmes said.

The Count's eyes flashed as I was shifted aside by Holmes, but he nodded and moved around the room. His eyes were always on me, and with every glace he seemed younger more vigorous, a man of action and strength, not a frail old dignitary.

"What of demons?" he asked, walking near to the window. He peeped between the drawn curtains, very cautiously. He winced at whatever he saw and drew back.

"Perhaps I should ask you," Holmes said.

"I think not," said the Count. He pursed his lips, and flicked his long white fingers. "And so goodbye, unless you bring something to my advantage." He glanced at me, and there was summer in the blue of his eyes.

"We do have something," I said, and the Count blinked, presumably startled to hear this interruption from a lady.

"Watson," said Holmes warningly.

I ignored him and approached the Count. "We have knowledge which concerns the Hungry Jewel."


End file.
